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FROM THE LIBRARY OF 


ROBERT ELLIOTT SPEER 











THE HUMAN SIDE OF HAWAII 





R. J. Baker Photo. 


“YOUTH COMES -UEBI 
An ‘“ American citizen of Japanese Ancestry ” inquires what the future holds in store for him! 


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Race Problems in the Mid- Pacific — 


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By 
ALBERT W. PALMER, D.D. 
Minister of Central Union Church, Honolulu 





THE PILGRIM PRESS 
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DEDICATED TO 
ARTHUR ARLETTD 


A CALIFORNIAN WHO LOVED HAWAII AND 
DIED ON HALEAKALA, “‘ THE BELOVED 
MOUNTAIN, NOVEMBER 15, 1921 


Digitized by the Internet Archive 
in 2022 with funding from 
Princeton Theological Seminary Library 


https://archive.org/details/humansideofhawai00palm 


PREFACE 


This book is the story of how East and West have met and 
still are meeting in Hawaii. It is based on a series of lectures 
which the author had the privilege of delivering in New York 
City in 1922 by the invitation of Union Theological Seminary. 
By permission of the Seminary these lectures were also given 
at Pacific School of Religion, Berkeley, California; Oberlin 
College; Andover Theological Seminary; Pomona College 
and, in part, at Hartford Theological Seminary and Yale 
Divinity School. 

The author’s hearty appreciation goes out to Union Theo- 
logical Seminary for this opportunity to interpret Hawau and 
for the privilege of publication; to the many friends who have 
offered materials, suggestions and criticisms; and to the 
photographers who have so generously allowed the use of 
pictures for the illustrations. 





INTRODUCTION 


The Purpose of this Book 


Out in the middle of the Pacific there is a fragment of 
America which America gravely misunderstands or, at best, 
regards but superficially and lightly. The Hawaiian Islands 
suggest to the average American only Waikiki and “ the lazy 
languorous latitudes of the Pacific.”’ The purpose of this 
book is to correct this misunderstanding and to set forth the 
real significance of Hawaii. It is not a land of hula dances, 
erass skirts and ukeleles — that is only the muddy foam on 
the beach and largely a matter of artificial stimulation for 
tourist trade and financial profit. Neither is Hawaii merely 
a land of sugar-cane and pineapples — that is its necessary 
economic basis, but not its deeper meaning. 


Where East and West Meet 


Deeper than grotesque amusements or commercial pros- 
perity lies the tremendous human meaning of Hawau. It is 
one of the two absolutely outstanding places in the world 
where East and West have met and mingled. The other is 
Constantinople. But what a contrast between Honolulu and 
Constantinople — a contrast in background, in present con- 
ditions and above all in hope. Whereas the Straits of the 
Bosporus have been for centuries the despair of the world, 
the Hawaiian Islands can almost as truthfully be called its 
door of hope. 

First Impressions of Hawai 


Hope, it must be granted, is not the impression which first 
comes when the traveler steps off the dock at Honolulu. 
After the pleasant excitement of being decorated with wreaths 
of flowers and driven through garden-bordered streets has 


icibesiiie 


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Williams Photo. 


STEAMER DOCK 


OR WREATHS AT THE 


SELLING LEIS 


HAWAIIAN GIRLS 


Introduction XI 


passed away, and the observer pauses to take in the human 
tide, the impression of brown faces and Oriental eyes, with 
the sinister presence of soldiers in uniform at every turn, 
makes him feel that the man must be an optimist indeed who 
could describe Hawaii as a door of hope from a human stand- 
point. 
A Visttor’s Questions 

Is this really a part of America? Are not the people of 
Hawaii slightly demented to think of statehood? Is not 
white and Christian America sure to lose out here ultimately 
and be overwhelmed by this ever rising Oriental tide? The 
soldiers may represent a temporary military ascendency, but 
must not the children of its soil, after all, determine in the 
end what the civilization of the land shall be? And are not 
these children hopelessly un-American? 


An Interracial Experiment Station 


The answer to such natural questions and misgivings is 
that Hawaii is America’s and the world’s interracial experi- 
ment station and that he who sees only the conspicuous but 
not especially significant soldiers and the brown-skinned people 
sees only the surface. He who would see deeper must know 
something of the history of each of these various racial groups, 
something of the traditions of Hawail, something of its schools 
and the social and religious forces which are molding Chinese 
and Japanese, Hawaiians, Portuguese and Filipinos into an 
American community. 


An Exotic Civilization 
It is characteristic of Hawaii that many of its most trivial 
and of its most important things have come from abroad. 
The grass skirt came from the South Seas— the ancient 
Hawaiians wore tapa, a kind of paper cloth made from bark. 
The ukelele is a Portuguese importation, called ukelele or 
“jumping flea’? by the Hawaiians in derision. So also 


Xl | Introduction 


Hawaii's religions, Christianity and Buddhism, are exotie and 
its population has been largely drawn from overseas, less than 
one-fifth of it being of the native Polynesian race. 


The Arrangement of the Book 


Facts like these explain why parts of this book are histori- 
cal. One must know the history to understand the present 
situation. If other pages read like missionary annals it is 
because the missionary activity was a fundamental part of 
the history. If yet other pages appear to be a discussion of 
race problems — well, these are the master problems which 
Hawaui’s history has inevitably brought upon her. And if 
yet other pages seem like a tract on Americanization — then 
again it must be said that Americanization is the great and 
fascinating work under way in Hawaii. 


First Western Influences 


The first chapter therefore will deal with the missionary 
background from 1820 to 1860. In this period the Polynesian 
race was Christianized and Westernized. Ethnologists are 
not sure but generally incline to think that the Polynesians, who 
include also the Maoris of New Zealand and the people of 
Tahiti, Samoa and the Marquesas, came originally from 
India. But if their origin was in the East, they became to 
a considerable degree Westernized by their contact with the 
missionary and the whaler and adopted a Western and gener- 
ally Protestant form of Christianity. This period therefore 
represents the first meeting of East and West in Hawaii. 


A Peaceful Invasion 


The second chapter will tell the story of the second alien 
invasion of Hawaii— this time the great flood of Oriental 
laborers, Chinese and Japanese, in the period from 1860 to 
1900. Here an ascendent Western civilization was almost 
completely inundated by the human flood from the East which 


Introduction Xi 


came at a time when, in numbers, vitality and morale, Hawaii 
was least prepared to receive and assimilate it. 


The Problems of Today 


The succeeding chapters present the human situation as it 
is in Hawai today — the racial difficulties and educational 
achievements, the industrial problem and the Japanese ques- 
tion. In each case the object is to show the forces at work, 
the prevailing drift of progress and the bearing of it all on 
the larger problems of the Pacific. 


Hawai’s Responsibility 

How will it all come out? Will Hawaii at last be American 
or Japanese? Will it be Christian or Buddhist? East and 
West are meeting here — which will prevail? Or will each 
learn something from the other? Will they meet to fight and 
snarl at one another or to appreciate and understand each 
other to the helping of the world? The fact that such ques- 
tions can be asked indicates the tremendous significance of 
Hawaii for every thoughtful American. These questions 
also reveal something of the responsibility resting upon every 
American resident in Hawai to be an ambassador of good 
will to the various races gathered there —a responsibility 
which, on the whole, is largely recognized and nobly lived up 
to by editors, teachers, social and religious workers and even 
the business men of the community. 

The problems of the Pacific, while delicate and dangerous 
enough, are hopeful in comparison with those of Europe. 
America is definitely committed to an interest in them by the 
Washington Conference on Limitation of Armaments and has 
dealt benevolently with China and with the Philippines. 
Japan, receding from its earlier aggressive attitude, has re- 
turned Shantung, withdrawn from Siberia and given evidence 
of a purpose to play the game honorably. China may be 


X1V Introduction 


saved and a new era of international morality may dawn in 
the Pacific. 


Hawai’s Strategic Importance 

Of all this Hawaii is in some sort a symbol and in it she may 
play a vital part. For is not the importance of Hawaii pri- 
marily educational rather than commercial or even military? 
In Hawaii may be demonstrated, first of all, an interracial 
civilization characterized by Christian good will and free 
American institutions. Out of this may go back to China 
and Japan leaders of their own race trained in this atmosphere 
of good will and freedom. And into it, as a vestibule to the 
Orient, might well come for further training and preparation 
those young people of America who are destined ultimately 
for social, religious, diplomatic or educational service in the 
Far East. 

What Verdict Fifty Years Hence ? 

Sometimes I wonder how this book will be appraised by the 
historian who, fifty years from now, may chance upon it in his 
search for the view-point and opinions of an earlier day. Will 
he say it was too optimistic — that the forces of racial inertia, 
human prejudice and world-wide strife were too great and 
that the hopes of Hawaii as a testing ground of interracial 
good will proved futile and chimerical? Or will he find in 


this book a reasoned foresight and well-grounded anticipation 
of the trend of progress? 


The Future in the Balance 


It is a case where ‘the will to believe’ may turn the 
balance. If enough people believe in meeting Hawaii’s prob- 
lems in the Christian spirit, there is a reasonable hope of 
Success. If enough people fail to accept this approach and 
try to deal with Hawau’s problems by sheer coercion or blind 
force and in a spirit of arrogant race pride, than Hawaii will 
only go the embittered way that Europe has gone already. 


Introduction Xv 


This book is, therefore, both a description of conditions and a 
rallying cry for all men of good will to help move those condi- 
tions forward in the direction so hopefully possible. 


Race Between Education and Catastrophe 


H. G. Wells has described history as “‘ a race between edu- 
eation and catastrophe.” It is just that in Hawau, and this 
book seeks to promote those social, economic, religious and 
interracial attitudes of mind which help make up the kind of 
education that will prevent catastrophe. Fifty years more 
will tell the story! But, meanwhile, Hawaii is going to be a 
tremendously interesting social laboratory in which to observe 
or, better yet, in which to live and have a part in the experi- 
ments. 


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CONTENTS 


PAGE 
PREFACE pose aes t SUT? Sei eee Vll 
LINGER UO LGU NCSraan Fre! pin oval ee) Te ae) oe eC Bane ere 1X 
SWONTENTCHGis (ocr flees &. eee, foo Sot Ges XVI 
OY SUO ReLITIUSTRATIONG gre oo. oe ee) prey eee X1X 
SRM WENT hr oe ce oe me Se on ee eee XX 
Chapter I 
Hawawu’s HistoricaAL AND Missionary BACKGROUND 1 
Chapter II 
Hawau’s Mippue Periop oF Reaction, TURMOIL 
AND COMPLICATION (FROM 1860 To 1900) . . . 40 
Chapter III 
PRESENT INTERRACIAL AND EDUCATIONAL PROBLEMS 607 
Chapter IV 
INDUSTRIAL PROBLEMS Acro, a Pattie abc. ye 85 
Chapter V 
hoe APANESH PRORDEM IN LLAWAIL “9. 8. a] 104 
Chapter VI 
PO WEeTOM EL RUPE TA WAT me fa) eet oe fee be ere = eur. lige 
VACUA ELA NAS Soe ae ae Ge a eel tet Wee ae 145 


RITE eee Le ee ts pos veees Sek hen taeee oe ph. Oe TA 





LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 


yout Gomes Up! . <4). . . . Frontispiece 


Hawatuan Girls Selling Leis or - Wreaths at the Steamer 
Dock . : 

A Land of Waving Palm Tr ees 

Hawauan Fisherman 

Statue of Kamehameha the Gr eat 

Old Mission House, Honolulu 

On the Brink of Kilauea Volcano 

Hilo Hawaiian Choir 

The Royal Sport of Hawan 

Kawaiahao Church, Honolulu 

Interior St. Peter’s (C hvenees: Church, Honolulu 

Easter Sunrise Service . 

The Mormon Temple at Taiea near ~ Honolula 

The Old Royal Palace in Honolulu 

Mission Memorial Building 

The Army and’ Navy Y. M. C. A. 

Chart Showing Racial Composition of Population i in the 
Hawauian Islands 

Population Graph 

Girls of Six Races 

Teaching Chinese Women English 

Filipino Women Receiving Instruction in Care of 
Children , ; 

Making Pot in Ancient Hawaiian Style 

Typical Plantation Village 

Japanese Field Laborers 

The Story of Esther. 

Mckinley High School “ Hi Y Club’ fe: 

A Japanese Girl in Hawaii 

Japanese Fishing Sampans in Holid ay Attire 

Hands Around the World. . 

Mid-Pacific Institute, a Missionary School for All Races 

Central Union Church Spire aby sh RG ear al: 

Class of 1922 Mid-Pacific Institute 


FAIR HAWAII 


Fair Hawaii, land of rainbows, 
Flashing reef and opal sea, 

Mauna Loa white with snow-drifts, 
Waving palms of Waikiki, 

Cloud-capped peaks of mighty Maui, 
Canyon temples of Kauai — 

Nature’s God in love and beauty 
Lifted up thy crags on high! 


Fair Hawau, thine the story 

Of the pilgrim souls who came, 
Daring seas, enduring exile, 

Christ’s true gospel to proclaim. 
God of missionary fathers, 

Grant us courage, faith and light, 
Lead us out in paths of service, 

Make us valiant for the right! 


Fair Hawai, we thy children 
Our aloha pledge to thee, 
New-found brothers from all races 
Gathered here in unity. 
O thou God of peace and justice, 
Help us in true love to dwell; 
Make our thoughts and deeds fraternal 
Karth’s great brotherhood foretell. 
— A. W. 


CHAPTER I 


HAWAII’S HISTORICAL AND MISSIONARY 
BACKGROUND 


Natural Beauty 

Hawaii is a land of rainbows, flashing reefs, opalescent seas 
and waving palms. It is a land of noble cliffs, mighty moun- 
tains and awe-inspiring volcanoes. It is a land of grass-green 
fields of sugar-cane, gray-green fields of pineapples, velvet- 
green hills crowned with enormous masses of clouds that 
build white fairy-lands in the sky above them. It is a land 
of blue skies and of moonlight, so luminous and golden that 
it casts a rainbow of its own and makes more fairy-like a 
landseape that is already incomparably romantic. 


Cross-roads of the Pacific 

Hawaii is the paradise of the Pacific, located at one of the 
converging travel centers of the world. It is 2100 miles from 
San Francisco, 3400 miles from Yokohama, 5000 miles from 
Melbourne, 4600 miles from Panama and, by no means least 
important, 5360 miles from the North Pole! Just inside the 
tropics it is, nevertheless, cooled by the trade-winds of the 
North Pacifie so that its normal range of temperature summer 
and winter is from 60 to 90. Hawaii is about the size of the 
states of Connecticut and Rhode Island combined, and com- 
prises, as Mark Twain has so beautifully said, “ the loveliest 
fleet of islands that lie at anchor in any ocean.” Or, as we 
sometimes put it, ‘‘ We have in Hawaii the climate they ad- 
vertise in Southern California! ”’ 





A LAND OF WAVING PALM TREES 


. 


Historical and Missionary Background 5} 


Interracial Laboratory 

On the human side Hawaii is a fascinating interracial ex- 
periment station where, under the American flag, with white 
leadership and a Christian missionary background, on the 
foundation of a brown-skinned Polynesian basic population, 
there is being built up a community combining representatives 
of the leading races of the Pacific area — Chinese, Japanese, 
Korean, Filipino and American, with a sprinkling of Porto 
Rican, Russian, German, Spanish, Portuguese and Norwegian 
by way of variety. If this sociological experiment in race 
relationships sueceeds, it will throw rays of light to both 
sides of the Pacific Ocean. If it fails, 1t will seriously set back 
the hopes of those who are sanguine for human unity. 


Historical Background 

To know anything well, one must know it historically and, 
so, to understand the significance of Hawai for Christian 
civilization you must know something of its past. My first 
purpose is, therefore, to sketch for you the romantic and pic- 
turesque historical and missionary background so different 
from the Hawaii of today and yet so necessary for an under- 
standing of it. 

Captain Cook 

Although the Hawaiian Islands were probably visited by 
Juan Gaetano, a Spanish navigator, in 1555, they remained 
unknown to the world at large until discovered by Captain 
Cook, the great English explorer, in 1778. He found them 
thickly populated, 400,000 people, according to his estimate, 
though that was probably much too large a figure. Although 
by necessity still in the stone age, there being no metals in 
the Islands, the Hawaiians had achieved considerable civili- 
zation of a feudalistic type. There was a sharp line drawn 
between the chiefs and common people. The former were 
prosperous and so enormous physically that some thought 


4 The Human Side of Hawai 


them to be of a different race. The common people lived a 
poverty-stricken hand-to-mouth existence. All that they had, 
including their labor, was subject to arbitrary levy by the 
chiefs. 
Primitive Religion 

To a tyrannical social order was added an oppressive re- 
ligion characterized by fierce gods requiring human sacrifices 
on certain occasions and propitiated also by a rigorous and 
highly inconvenient system of tabus. For example, women 
were forbidden certain foods, like bananas, pork, cocoanuts, 
turtles and several varieties of fish. Men and women could 
not eat together. There were times when it was tabu to 
launch a canoe, build a fire, utter a sound, beat tapa or pound 
poi. A commoner must not cross even the shadow of a chief. 


Kahunaism 


The great gods were worshiped by human sacrifices at 
heiaus, as their temples were called. These heiaus were large 
open-air enclosures with massive walls of stone and great 
hideous wooden idols. But, in addition to this major worship, 
there was a wide-spread popular system of scorcery, incanta- 
tion and mental healing carried on by kahunas or medicine 
men—a system which still exists subterraneously today. 
One cheerful custom of a certain class of kahunas was that of 
praying people to death! To do this it was first necessary 
for the kahuna to obtain hair, nail-pairings or spittle of the 
intended victim. Hence the important and honorable office 
of spittoon bearer in the entourage of each chief! 


Family Life 
The family tie was a very light one, polygamy, polyandry 
and infanticide being painfully prevalent. Relationship 
under such conditions was naturally reckoned through the 
mother rather than the father, and a Hawaiian child called all 
his uncles and aunts father or mother indiscriminately. A 


~- 


Historical and Missionary Background ») 


curious relic of this weakness in family tradition still survives 
in the Hawaiian custom of loaning and even giving away their 
children to their friends. This custom has its good side, for 
orphans are readily adopted and made one of the family. 
With this weakness of family life was coupled a sexual laxity 
symbolized and stimulated by indecent hulas, or dances, in 
honor of the obscene goddess Laka. 
Moral Disintegration 

There is good evidence that the forty years which elapsed 
between the discovery by Captain Cook in 1778 and the 
coming of the missionaries in 1820 were years of great moral 
disintegration. The old sanctions and restraints were over- 
ridden ruthlessly by sailors who counted no moral law existed 
in the Pacific and to this demoralization of the natives was 
added the curse of rum. The missionaries, when they arrived, 
found a nation of drunkards, going to pieces in unspeakable 
debauchery somewhat as the Marquesans are going today 
and as any primitive people is practically certain to go if it 
receives only the externals of civilization without its basis in 
Christian faith and ethics. 


Hawaiian Virtues 

But, with much that was degrading and barbarous, the 
ancient Hawauans had also much more that was noble. They 
were great fishermen and sailors. In earlier years they had 
navigated by the stars even to Samoa and Tahiti over two 
thousand miles away. They had noble meles or epic songs, 
artistic tapa or cloth of pounded bark, beautiful mats and 
baskets and great calabashes, and canoes which testify to their 
craftsmanship. They had splendid sports, boxing, surf-riding, 
sliding down hill on sleds, races and discus throwing. Their 
helmets and feather cloaks were supremely beautiful. Their 
bodies were also beautiful, though perhaps too much given to 
corpulency. There are few more beautiful sights today than 
a bronzed half-naked Hawaiian fisherman poised upon the 








R. J. Baker Photo. 


AN HAWAIIAN FISHERMAN 
As beautiful as a bronze statue, posed upon the coral reef ready to cast bis net, 





Historical and Missionary Background fk 


reef ready to cast his net. The Hawaiian, who is a Polynesian, 
related to the Maoris of New Zealand and the natives of 
Samoa, Tahiti and the Marquesas, is an animated bronze 
statue as beautiful in form and color as Giovanni da Bologna’s 
Mercury. Nor was this beauty only skin deep. In spite of 
idolatry, kahunaism, and sensuality, the Hawaiian had a 
kindly soul. He was not a cannibal.* As one of them said 
once concerning Captain Cook: ‘ Yes, we killed him — but 
we didn’t eat him!’’ Only the word “ aloha,’’ which means 
love and good will, can adequately express the affectionate 
and gracious quality of the Hawauan race. 


Effect of Foreigners 

Now the coming of the foreigner had a profound influence 
on this primitive race. First of all it brought new diseases — 
most terrible of all syphilis, then measles, small-pox and later 
leprosy. It also brought metal, weapons, ships and military 
knowledge. Kamehameha the Great, through the use of the 
white man’s weapons and with two white sailors as his leu- 
tenants, succeeded in conquering all the islands and bringing 
them for the first time under one government. A third in- 
evitable, though at first unconscious, effect of the presence of 
white men was to break down the native religion. The most 


* Rev. W. D. Westervelt, whose book Legends of Hawaii is a recognized 
authority, says on this point: “‘ There were instances of cannibalism, really 
quite a number in the legends, but these instances were denounced by the 
Hawaiians. As a nation the Hawaiians were never cannibals. I have never 
found a legend which even hints at nation-wide cannibalism. When a canni- 
bal was discovered he was driven from his home and the people tried to kill 
him. This is the continuous record from the cannibal stories of Waipio Valley, 
Hawaii, Molokai, Kauai and Oahu. As far as I recall every cannibal: was 
killed.”’ The grandson of a brother of Hewahewa the high priest of Kame- 
hameha personally told Mr. Westervelt about a human sacrifice on the altar 
on top of Punchbowl crater, just back of Honolulu where, according to native 
writers, human sacrifices had been offered for centuries. This man said to Mr. 
Westervelt: ‘‘ It would be easy to sacrifice a drunken sailor — no one miss! ”’ 
Mr. Westervelt suggests that a mistaken interpretation of such a statement 
may be responsible for Rufus Anderson’s statement, ‘‘ The cannibals of the 
Sandwich Islands would erewhile cook and carve a merchant or marine.”’ 
They might have sacrificed him, but they would not have eaten him. 





STATUE OF KAMEHAMEHA THE GREAT 


Wearing the robe of golden feathers and the old Hawaiian feather helmet so 
like a Greek helmet in design, 


Historical and Missionary Background Mu 


vital element in this religion was the observance of the various 
tabus referred to above. When the native saw the white 
man violate these tabus with impunity his inherited house of 
faith came crashing down about his ears — he became for all 
practical purposes an athetist. The gods he had worshiped 
were revealed to him as either dead or powerless. Moreover 
the white man’s liquor made the native, when drunk, violate 
the tabus himself — and nothing happened. The result was 
that, after the death of Kamehameha the Great, a group of 
strong-willed dowager queens, former wives of Kamehameha, 
who were virtually regents and guardians of Liholiho the 
young king, persuaded him in 1819 to violate the tabus and 
publicly abolish them. The next logical step was the de- 
struction of the temples and burning of the idols, which 
accordingly was done under the leadership, curiously enough, 
of Hewahewa the high priest himself. <A brief civil war fol- 
lowed in which the conservative party was beaten and the 
atheist, tabu-breaking party conquered. This destruction of 
ancient sanctions and restraints was a dangerous thing and 
would have been fatal had not the missionaries providentially 
been already on the way with a nobler religion and morality. 


Missionaries Sail 

By a most remarkable coincidence this religious revolution 
had happened while a little brig, the Thaddeus, was in the 
midst of her five months’ voyage from Boston to Hawaii, 
1820, bringing: the little pioneer company of fourteen mis- 
sionaries, led by Hiram Bingham and Asa Thurston, to begin 
Christian work in the Islands. They had expected to come to 
a people bowing down to horrible idols and offering human 
sacrifices and they were prepared to risk life itself, if need 
be, in a struggle against idolatry. ‘‘ Probably none of you will 
live to witness the downfall of idolatry,’ said a friend to 
Samuel Ruggles, one of this pioneer band of missionaries on 
the morning before he sailed. Yet by a preparation which 


10 The Human Side of Hawau 


seemed to them most providential, even while they were on the 
voyage the idols were overthrown, and when they reached 
Hawau they found instead of fierce devotees of idolatry a 
nation temporarily without a religion. 


Story of Opukahaia 

How the missionaries happened to come at all is a romantic 
story. There is still an ancient ruined heiau or temple on 
Kealakekua Bay where Captain Cook was worshiped as a 
god and within sight of the monument that marks the spot 
where he was killed. In 1809 a Hawaiian lad, Opukahaia, 
who lived there with his uncle, who was the priest, swam out 
to an American whaler, stowed away and was taken to New 
Haven by a Captain Brintnall. Here he attracted the atten- 
tion of E. W. Dwight, Samuel Mills of Haystack fame, and 
other believers in the then novel and romantic idea of foreign 
missions. The story is that he was found sitting on the steps 
of Yale College crying because there was no one to teach his 
people. The result was that he and four other Hawaiian 
youths were enrolled among the first nineteen pupils in the 
Foreign School founded in 1817 at Cornwall, Connecticut. 
Opukahaia died in 1818 and is buried at Cornwall, but his 
work lived on in the band of fourteen missionaries who sailed 
for the Sandwich Islands on October 23, 1819. 


Missionary Achievement 

During the next forty years from 1820 to 1860 occurred 
one of the most remarkable transformations of a people under 
the educational influence of noble teachers and Christian 
ideals which the world has ever witnessed. The pioneer 
company of missionaries was reenforced by others until, by 
1860, the American Board had sent out about one hundred 
and forty missionaries, (though probably not more than 
ninety were ever at work at one time) and had expended 
about $1,000,000. 


Historical and Missionary Background rar 


Tribute to Pioneers 

We must pause and bear tribute to this noble company of 
men and women who left kindred and civilization to serve an 
unknown and supposedly barbarous people in one of the ob- 
scure corners of the earth. Their lives represent as near pure 
devotion to Christian ideals as one can find in all the history 
of the church. It is interesting to compare them with the 
Pilgrims on the Mayflower just two hundred years before 
them. While the Mayflower measured 180 tons the Thaddeus 
was only 240 tons — scarcely 40 per cent larger and the voyage 
was thirteen thousand miles instead of three thousand and 
over five months long instead of two. The hardships of those 
sarly days — no regular supplies of food, flour caked with sea 
water and filled with vermin, grass houses without floors or 
windows, pitiless publicity from the childlike people around 
them, hatred and persecution from the beach-combers and 
dissolute sailors whose orgies they prevented — all these were 
part of the price they paid. But the heaviest burden fell on 
the women. To come to a wild land and live and keep house 
under such conditions was heroie enough, but to bear children 
under such circumstances and nurture them, keep them from 
the contamination of heathenism round about and at. last 
send them away for years of separation to be educated in 
America — this is more than heroism, it approaches martyr- 
dom! 





Lucy Thurston's Story 

Several interesting autobiographies remain as_ original 
sources of information about the experiences of these early 
missionaries. Probably the most vivid and inspiring of these 
is The Memoirs of Lucy G. Thurston which has recently been 
reprinted with additional illustrations under the auspices of 
the Woman’s Board of Missions of Central Union Church in 
Honolulu. It is a book which every woman who reads will 
prize as a revelation of the capacity of womanhood for heroic 


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Historical and Missionary Background iB} 


endurance and high adventure. Memoirs of Laura Fish 
Judd and a slender little pamphlet of letters by Sibyl Bingham, 
the wife of Hiram Bingham, and many other letters, some 
never printed, also remain to tell this story of heroic woman- 
hood. 


Results 


What good did it all do? What was accomplished by these 
hundred and forty men and women and the million dollars 
given freely without hope of return by America to Hawaii? 
Let me catalogue for you in most summary fashion the 
achievements of this mission. 


Written Language 

Of course the missionaries at once started to learn the 
language and to reduce it to writing. But the very first 
teaching of all had to be done in English and within three 
months the king was reading the New Testament in English. 
Over one hundred years ago, on January 7, 1822, the first 
printed page was taken off the press in Honolulu by Keeau- 
moku. It was a page of Webster’s spelling book. Soon an 
Hawaiian primer was printed, then the Sermon on the Mount 
and Luke’s Gospel, later the entire New Testament, all in 
Hawaiian. The chiefs learned to read first but soon the privi- 
lege was extended to the common people. The result was a 
veritable epidemic of learning to read! A whole nation went 
to school outdoors under the trees; those who learned a little 
taught that little to others. In 1835 the governor of Maui 
announced that none could hold office or be married unless 
they could read — which was certainly a practical way of 
stimulating literacy! But reading and writing really needed 
little stimulation. They constituted a new game which 
everyone wanted to play. As Dr. Hyde quaintly puts it: 
“The utter vacuity of the heathen mind made the people 
ready to while away their time in school.” 


14 The Human Side of Hawau 


Education 

But reading and writing are only the beginning of an educa- 
tional system and, after the first burst of learning to read on 
the part of adults was over, the missionaries began to organize 
definite schools for children. The first company of mission- 
aries contained two preachers and their wives, two school- 
masters and their wives, a physician, a farmer and a printer 
and their wives. Both the preachers’ wives had married on 
short notice right out of the schoolroom to come as mission- 
aries. Obviously the method of attack was to be educational 
and the education was to be industrial as well as mental and 
religious. 

Broad Commission 

Although warned to abstain from politics, their commission 
was a broad one as shown by these noble parting words spoken 
by Dr. Worcester, the venerable secretary of the American 
Board: “ Your views are not to be lmited to a low narrow 
scale; but you are to open your hearts wide and set your 
mark high. You are to aim at nothing short of covering these 
islands with fruitful fields, and pleasant dwellings and schools 
and churches, and of raising up the whole people to an elevated 
state of Christian civilization. You are to obtain an ade- 
quate knowledge of the language of the people; to make them 
acquainted with letters; to introduce and get into extended 
operation and influence among them the arts and institutions 
and usages of civilized life.” 


Manual Training 

It was a tremendous commission and it was broadly and 
nobly carried out. By 1835 there were 900 schools and 50,000 
pupils. In 1831, eleven years after the arrival of the Thad- 
deus, Lahainalua Seminary was founded and became the 
model for other schools of secondary grade. It was character- 
istic of the resourcefulness of the missionaries that these earlier 
schools were manual training schools. This was a practical 


Historical and Missionary Background 15 


necessity, not a mere educational theory. The pupils had no 
way to pay except by their own labor. Not only agriculture 
but carpentry, cooking, blacksmithing, sewing and printing 
were taught in these early schools. Even copper-plate engrav- 
ing of very creditable quality was taught at Lahainalua 
Seminary. 
Results in America 

Just here it is worth while noting how these manual training 
schools influenced America. Everybody knows the impor- 
tance of Booker T. Washington’s work at Tuskegee, and 
almost everyone knows that the great negro educator was 
trained by General Armstrong at Hampton Institute. But 
how many people know where General Armstrong got the 
ideas of industrial education which he demonstrated so splen- 
didly at Hampton? The answer is that General Armstrong 
was the son of a Hawaiian missionary. His father, Richard 
Armstrong, was from 1847 to 1854 Superintendent of Public 
Instruction in Hawau. The mother of Tuskegee, therefore, 
is Hampton, but the grandmother is the Hilo Boarding 
School and the great grandmother, Lahainalua Seminary! 
It is written in the Bible ‘‘ Cast thy bread upon the waters ”’ 
and this story illustrates the remarkable reaction foreign 
missions may have on the country that sends them forth. 


Social Service 

In their ideas on industrial education the missionaries were 
ahead of their day — forced ahead by practical conditions. 
But their industrial influence was not confined to schools. 
Every mission station became inevitably a center of civili- 
zation, giving object lessons in family life and the domestic 
virtues, in mechanical arts and the laws of health. It was 
the missionary who bred animals and built roads and found 
himself compelled by force of circumstances to be mason, 
‘arpenter, physician, stock-breeder, surveyor, nurse and 
peacemaker. 


16 The Human Side of Hawau 


Appeal of 1836 

In 1836 the missionaries sent a remarkable appeal to Boston 
for reenforcements. They found that no foreign workman 
then in the Islands would teach a native anything and so 
they asked for teachers in all the arts of civilization. This 
remarkable document said among other things: ‘‘ We wish to 
see the rights of the people better understood, better defined, 
better respected by those in power and better maintained by 


the people themselves. ... The people need competent 
instruction in agriculture, manufactures, and the various 
methods of production . . . and competent instruction im- 


mediately in the science of government in order to promote 
industry, secure ample means of support and protect the 
just rights of all.” 


Reenforcement of 1837 

But, due to a number of causes, no adequate help came in 
response to this appeal. This was partly because of the 
conservatism in the American Board, which feared too great 
a combination of sacred and secular, and also because of the 
hard times in the United States. The reenforcement of 1837 
was, however, the largest group ever sent out and consisted 
of thirty-two people, of whom twenty were teachers besides 
a physician and a secular agent and four ministers and their 
wives. This strong reenforcement sent the mission vigor- 
ously ahead and was one of the contributing causes to the 
great revival of 1839. 


Missionary Statesmen 


Though their appeal was not fully answered, nevertheless 
the missionaries found another way of helping the broader 
‘ause of Hawaiian civilization. If the American Board 
would not send them secular leaders they could resign from 
the Board and become such secular leaders themselves and 
this, accordingly, a number of them did. It was no disloyalty 


Historical and Missionary Background ibe 


to the missionary cause. It was the most effective way of 
serving it, in view of the short-sightedness of the Board. Mr. 
Richards therefore became in 1839 interpreter and adviser to 
the king, giving that very year a series of lectures to the king 
and chief on the science of government which is the foundation 
of all constitutional government in Hawaii. He became 
Minister of Public Instruction till his death in 1847, and was 
succeeded in that office by Richard Armstrong. Dr. G. P. 
Judd resigned to become for over ten years Minister of Foreign 
Affairs and Finance — the veritable mainstay of the govern- 
ment. lLorrin Andrews resigned to serve as associate justice 
of the first Supreme Court — beginning a judiciary whose 
traditions of uprightness and legal ability have been consis- 
tently sustained throughout Hawaiian history. Some of 
these resignations, that of Mr. Andrews at least, and others 
later, were also in protest against the slowness of the Board 
to break with its slave-holding constituency and come squarely 
to the abolition view-point. 


Peaceful Revolution 


The contribution which the missionaries made to civil 
government is indicated by the fact that under their tutelage 
on June 7, 1839, the king, Kamehameha III, issued a Bill of 
Rights promising a constitution and individual ownership of 
land. This action meant the overturning of the feudal tyr- 
anny of the chiefs over the common people and the replacing 
of an absolute by a constitutional monarchy. Where else in 
history has so marked a revolution been secured by the in- 
fluence of moral and religious teaching alone without an hour 
of rebellion or a show of force? Not at Runnymede, nor at 
Liberty Hall, nor at the French Revolution! 

The simple constitution of 1840 was replaced later by the 
more adequate constitution of 1842 written by Dr. G. P. 
Judd, John li and Chief Justice Lee. Changed, amended and 
expanded this has been the basic law of the land and still 





R. J. Baker Photo. 


ON THE BRINK OF KILAUEA VOLCANO 
Where Kapiolani threw stones into the lake of fire and defied Pele the volcano goddess. 


Historical and Missionary Background ibs) 


exists, in part, in the present Organic Act of Congress by 
which Hawaii is governed today. 


What About Evangelization ? 


But some one says: What about evangelization? These 
people were missionaries. Did they expend all their efforts 
on education and civil government? By no means. ‘Their 
educational work was the foundation which had to be laid 
before evangelization was possible, and their influence on civil 
government was because of their previous success in both 
education and evangelization. The missionaries were very 
slow and cautious in the beginning about receiving converts 
and naturally these had to be made, under an absolute mon- 
archy, from among the chiefs. It was a great turning-point 
when in 1825 Kaahumanu the great-hearted, wise and de- 
termined queen dowager, widow of Kamehameha the Great, 
became a Christian. There now ensued a period when Hawaii 
was most fortunately under the leadership of a remarkable 
group of women of high rank — Kaahumanu, Kapiolani, 
Kinau, — who by sincerely accepting Christianity, led their 
people into the light. The story of how Kapiolani journeyed 
to Kilauea Voleano, the supposed abode of the dread fire 
goddess Pele, and defied her, throwing stones into the crater 
and eating the ohelo berries sacred to the goddess, is one of 
the most thrilling and dramatic tales in missionary annals. 
It moved Tennyson to write his poem “ Kapiolani,’ a portion 
of which is as follows: 

“When from the terrors of Nature a people have fashion’d 
and worship a Spirit of Evil, 

Blest be the Voice of the Teacher who calls to them 
‘Set yourselves free!’ 

Noble the Saxon who hurl’d at his Idol a valorous weapon 

in olden England! 

Great and greater, and greatest of women, island heroine, 

Kapiolani 


20 The Human Side of Hawaii 


Clomb the mountain, and flung the berries, and dared the 
Goddess, and freed the people 

Of Hawaiee! 

A people believing that Peele the Goddess would wallow in 
fiery riot and revel 

On Kilauea, : 

Dance in a fountain of flame with her devils, or shake with 
her thunders and shatter her island, 

Rolling her anger 

Thro’ blasted valley and flaring forest in blood-red cataracts 
down to the sea! 

Long as the lava-light 

Glares from the lava-lake 

Dazing the starlight, 

Long as the silvery vapour in daylight 

Over the mountain 

Floats, will the glory of Kapiolani be mingled with either on 
Hawaiee.”’ 


The Revival of 1839 
After years of education and seed-sowing, the day of reap- 
ing came !—notably in the great revival of 1839 — almost 
twenty years after the arrival of the first missionaries; when 
15,000 converts were added to the church. On one Sunday 
in July, 1838, Titus Coan at Hilo baptized 1705 persons — 
they were arranged in rows and the missionary passed along 
sprinkling the baptismal water upon them with a brush! 
From 1823 to 1863 over 53,000 converts were received. As 
early as 1852 over 30 per cent of the total population of the 
country were members of the church in good and regular 
standing! 
Hawai Christianized 
By 1860 the task of the missionaries seemed to many people 
to be completed. The Islands had been given schools and a 
constitutional government, the people were clothed, literate 


Historical and Missionary Background 21 


and showed a larger percentage of church membership than 
some of the most religious sections of America. In forty brief 
years a great missionary task had been accomplished, a nation 
had been helped to Christian civilization and the Sandwich 
Islands were the prize exhibit in the show-windows of the 
American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. 


Christianity for Haport 

Not only this, but since 1852 the Hawaiian churches had 
themselves been carrying on with vigor and success a foreign 
mission of their own among the other islands of the Pacific. 
Their mission to the Marquesas began most dramatically in 
response to a personal visit in 1853 by Matunui a chief of 
Fatuhiva asking that Christian missionaries be sent to his 
islands. This mission is still in operation, though for many 
years past it has been in the hands of the French Protestants, 
France being in control of the Marquesan Islands. The 
mission to Micronesia well known in America through its 
famous missionary ship the Morning Star began in 1852 with 
the departure of two Hawaiian ministers and their wives in 
company with the pioneer band of American Board mission- 
aries for the Gilbert, Marshall and Caroline Islands. Both 
native and white workers followed from time to time, including 
such distinguished missionaries as Luther H. Gulick and 
Hiram Bingham II who translated the Bible into Gilbertese 
and James Kekela whose noble act in saving a sailor from being 
eaten by cannibals in the Marquesas brought him the famous 
gift of a watch as a personal testimonial from President Lin- 
coln. These mission fields, due to political changes, have 
largely passed now into the hands of the missionary boards 
of other nations. But during their fifty years of active sup- 
port the Hawaian churches sent out thirty missionaries and 
over $112,000 for these missions in the South Seas. 


bo 


The Human Side of Hawau 


Criticisms of Missionaries 

As is inevitable in any vigorous constructive work like that 
of the American Board Mission to Hawail, criticisms have not 
been lacking. Mr. Manley Hopkins, Hawaiian consul at 
London during the sixties, incorporated in his book on Hawaii 
in 1862 some criticisms intended to justify the sending of 
Anglican missionaries to Hawaii. These criticisms probably 
fairly represent the anti-missionary point of view of about 
1860. What were they? 


Too Legalistic 

First and fundamentally, that the missionaries had been 
too legalistic, presenting a severe, judicial Old Testament 
righteousness rather than a more gracious winsome gospel. 
They had attempted to regulate conduct by law, through 
Sabbath legislation and prohibition of liquor. This criti- 
cism sounds familiar and doubtless has a real foundation. 
Our ancestors of a hundred years ago were Puritans and Cal- 
vinists and the stern moral code of New England was theirs. 
We, who have escaped perhaps too far in the other direction, 
would probably feel somewhat cramped if we were trans- 
ported back into the legalistic atmosphere of their religion. 
And yet this is to be said by way of balance, that historically 
the law does precede the gospel, and they were dealing with 
a childlike people who needed “line upon line and precept 
upon precept.” Their conception of the proper kind of 
Sabbath-keeping may have been irksome but their idea of 
saving the natives from alcoholism has been fully justified by 
modern medical science and the social experience of the years. 
They were far ahead of their day, and of their fellow reli- 
gionists in America, in their ideas about prohibition. Where 
their Puritanism made most enemies was in their high stan- 
dard of sex morality. It was indeed a ‘“ counsel of perfec- 
tion” to the primitive Hawaiian with a totally different 
tradition behind him, but, after all, it was either this ideal or 


Historical and Missionary Background 20 


else disease, degeneracy and extinction for the race. And the 
missionaries chose the ideal and nobly taught it and exempli- 
fied it. As Henry van Dyke said most beautifully in his Cen- 
tennial Address at Kawaiahao Church in 1920: ‘‘ They hung 
the lei of joy about the neck of virtue and kindled the flame 
of honor on the sacred altar of hospitality.” 


Clothes Detrimental ? 

Some people have complained that the missionaries made 
the natives wear clothes and thus reduced the picturesqueness 
and increased the death rate! There are several angles to 
this. Undoubtedly the missionaries did invent the holoku* 
and promote the wearing of clothes. But clothes were in- 
evitable from imitation of the white man, even had there 
been no missionaries about. It was the chiefs who demanded 
clothes of the missionaries and one of the early arduous tasks 
of the missionary women, clearly recorded in the memoirs of 
Mrs. Thurston and Mrs. Bingham, was making dresses for 
queens and ruffled shirts for kings! What the missionaries 
did was to set the fashions. They carefully made the first 
dresses for the queen, as Mrs. Thurston quaintly records, in 
the style of 1819 — the year they left Boston. They were up 
to the minute on style! They little knew they were setting 
the fashion for over a century and that Hawaiian women in 
1920 would still be wearing with incredible grandeur and 
dignity the holokus cut after the fashion of 1820! One may 
pause here and ask if modern missionaries to primitive peoples 
are as well informed as to the latest styles — and also as to 
whether the styles of today are as worthy of perpetuation for 
a hundred years! 

* The holoku is a simple gown which is the typical dress of Hawaiian women 
today. It hangs from the shoulders, has a yoke but no belt and flows in ample 


folds to the feet. It often has a train and is made in many different materials 
and colors. 


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Historical and Missionary Background 20 


Hawaiian Sports 

One superficial criticism of the missionaries has been that 
they destroyed the noble sports and pastimes of the ancient 
Hawaiians — only two of which, surf-riding and hula dancing, 
seem to have survived to the present day. 

Those who make this criticism are earnestly reeommended 
to read the careful and authoritative article by Dr. N. B. 
Emerson to be found in The Friend of August, 1892. Dr. 
Emerson, who was a Hawaiian scholar of the first rank, brings 
out the interesting fact that the old Hawaiian sports were 
largely associated with a remarkable national festival, the 
Makahiki which was observed with great ceremony during 
the four months from October to January. This period was 
“devoted to the pursuit of pleasure; festivity and games.”’ 
Among these games, in addition to surf-riding and hula dane- 
ing, were a kind of bowling or discus throwing, foot racing, 
the glancing of heavy darts (pahee) along a special roadway 
and, most thrilling of all, a game of sliding down hill, not over 
snow, of course, but down a specially prepared course called 
papa holua made of stone with stone curbing but covered with 
fresh leaves to make it slippery for the long slender sleds. 
Remains of these holua courses are still extant in Kona and 
elsewhere. 


Why They Disappeared 

It is interesting to note the reasons Dr. Emerson gives for 
the decadence or extinetion of Hawaiian sports. One is the 
absorption in warfare which characterized the latter part of 
the Eighteenth Century and obscured the occupations of 
peace. With the acquirement of muskets and other Euro- 
pean weapons war became an even more fascinating and still 
more deadly sport or rather a destructive madness which 
everywhere and always tends to kill both sport and _ sports- 
manship. A second and deep-lying reason is to be found in 
the fact that sports, by their very association with the Maka- 


26 The Human Side of Hawan 


hiki festival, were intimately allied with the religious and tabu 
system just as the somewhat similar Greek Olympian games 
were allied with Greek religion. When the idols were de- 
stroyed and the tabus abolished, the system of sports so inti- 
mately associated with them inevitably received a staggering 
blow. Dr. Emerson points out that it is very significant that 
the date chosen by Liholiho and Kaahumanu for the formal 
breaking of the tabus was the very day for the opening of the 
Makahiki festival season in 1819. The Makahiki was never 
celebrated again! “It was the unhappy fortune of Hawaii’s 
ancient games to be too intimately allied by ties of blood re- 
lationship with those twin monsters, the tabu and idol wor- 
ship, and when they were destroyed it fared hard with that 
nobler institution which had many worthy features that one 
would gladly have seen perpetuated and rehabilitated in de- 
cent shape if it had been possible.” 


The New Sports 


Not only were the gods who had presided over the ancient 
sports now defunct but at the same time new interests came 
crowding in to the Hawaiian mind — interests brought by the 
white man, some of them good, some bad. 

One of the most absorbing of these was the acquirement 
of the white man’s civilization — reading and writing are a 
most fascinating game if you stumble on them in the midst 
of adult life instead of having been so intimately associated 
with them from childhood that you fail to realize how much 
they add to the interest of life. The introduction of horses 
produced a form of motion which made the foot-racing and 
sliding down hill seem tame and childish. It is worthy of 
note that this island people took to horseback riding as to 
the manner born. No better cowboys can be found than the 
Hawanans. But, alas, the white man brought other games 
less beneficial although tragically absorbing to the Hawaiian 
— cards, dice and whiskey. Kamehameha I and others after 


lawl 


Historical and Missionary Background 27 


him, notably Kamehameha III, struggled valiantly against 
the introduction of liquor-drinking among their people, but, 
in a day when modern temperance sentiment was almost 
unknown and when a foreign government forced the admis- 
sion of its brandy by military power, they could hardly be 
expected to succeed. 


Missionaries Not to Blame 

It was not the missionaries, then, who destroyed the sports 
of the Hawaiians. They probably were far from having our 
modern sympathy with athletics and yet unconsciously they 
introduced what were, in effect, new games, to a people who 
had lost their old ones. These new games were going to school, 
organized government, horseback riding, printing, house- 
building, farming and wearing clothes. Others, not mis- 
slonaries, supplemented these games with whiskey, dice and 
sards. 

Liturgy Too Cold 

The second criticism of the missionaries, beyond their theo- 
logical and ethical Puritanism, had to do with their liturgical 
Puritanism. Their worship was too cold and barren and ill- 
adapted to the warm, emotional, colorful native tempera- 
ment. This criticism is made very effectively by R. H. Dana, 
author of Two Years Before the Mast, who deserves to be 
listened to because he also wrote most appreciatively of the 
missionaries and their achievements. But he was an Episco- 
palian and saw things from an interesting point of view. He 
said: 

R. H. Danas Judgment 

“The minds of the natives of this zone of the globe pecu- 
larly require something to retain their attention and interest. 
The missionaries have recognized this law 7n their schools, and 
find it expedient to fix the attention of the scholars in recita- 
tion by classes, by responsive and general reading and an- 
swers, by the use of figures on blackboards, and by maps and 


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Historical and Missionary Background Zo 


pictures. The only system of worship and discipline which 
the missionaries have introduced has been that which is 
known at home as the Puritan or Independent, and in this 
they have had the field to themselves. The houses of worship 
are plain, naked buildings, with pews and benches and a large 
desk, in which the preacher, sometimes dressed in the tweed 
sack-coat of the shop and market (or, as I once saw, with the 
spurs on his boots), stands to read, preach, and pray. The 
congregation sit through the whole service, not only never 
kneeling or standing in prayer, but not even bending the head 
forward in token of reverence. The music is solely the sing- 
ing of one or two rhyming hymns, performed by a small choir. 
The congregation have no part in the service — they are 
simply listeners from beginning to end; young or old, learned 
or unlearned, they are expected to be attentive listeners for 
some two hours, without a word to say, a thing to do, a sound 
to utter for themselves. My observation, after attending 
several places of worship in the principal islands, is that the 
natives, except there be some stirring passage in the sermon, 
are languid and easily-distracted listeners and irreverent 
actors. In their family worship they kneel, and are more 
reverent, being left more to their instincts. At public -wor- 
ship they come in at all times, sit, look about, easily fall 
asleep, and when the last prayer ends, start for the door a 
good deal as a theatre breaks up — hardly ever waiting for 
the benediction.* 
Catholic Contrast 

“Tt is not difficult to see how the Roman Catholic Church, 
with its open doors, free sittings, daily mass and vespers, its 
corps of teaching and visiting nuns, its sacramental system, 

* Note: ‘‘ Mr. Dana arrived at the Islands late in the active missionary 
period. For a long time at first the mission services were new and interesting 
to the Hawaiians. In my younger days I have regularly attended missionary 
church services and it seems to me that there was generally good attention by 


the congregations. They generally joined heartily in the singing.” 
Sanford B. Dole. 


50 The Human Side of Hawai 


its worship addressed to the mind and heart through the eye 
and ear, as well as by the word to the understanding; with 
its service, which gives a part to all, and especially its system 
of commemorations, and, in the modern sense, its ‘ spiritual- 
ism’ of angels and departed saints, has strongly enlisted the 
almost vacant native faculties. 

“The subject has attracted attention in the Islands. I 
found that many who agreed with me in a high estimate of 
the good the missionaries have done, yet felt the defects of 
the public worship; and one of the missionaries told me he 
had long thought that changes must be made in their system 
in the direction of the ritual and liturgy of the English Church.”’ 


Criticism Worth Pondering 
We who today frankly and gladly recognize that our Puri- 
tan ancestors went too far in their rejection of the beautiful 
in worship and who are striving to recover the dignity and 
beauty of a richer liturgical service without losing the freedom 
and spontaneity of free worship, may well ponder these words 
of Dana carefully. Face to face with heathenism, the Chris- 
tian missionary should not present Christianity as a religion 
of barren ugliness, of repellent architecture and undignified 
observances. We still need a nobler, more worshipful church 
architecture, a liturgy with more congregational participa- 
tion and perhaps it is well to be reminded that William Brad- 
ford wore a gown in preaching to the little Pilgrim colony at 
Plymouth and that processionals of vested choirs and the use 
of printed as well as impromptu prayers may promote the 

impressiveness of Christian worship today. 


The Other Side 
But again, in all fairness to the missionaries, it should be 
noted that the religion of our Hawaiian churches has never 
been by any means the cold, joyless, austere thing one might 


Historical and Missionary Background OL 


imagine. Anyone who has ever visited a hoike* will recog- 
nize that joy, music, recitation in concert and even drama 
and humor eventually did enter into this grim Puritan re- 
ligion of the missionaries. It is to the credit of the mission- 
ary that he taught the Hawaiians to sing. This was not at 
first a promising task. Lyman says in Hawaiian Yesterdays 
that, as late as 1841, ‘‘ sometimes there would be audible 
attempts at singing a hymn but such efforts usually illustrated 
piety rather than melody!” Compare that with the wonder- 
ful chorus work of our Hawaiian choirs of today! 

It may also be said by way of mitigation of the charge that 
the religion of the missionaries was too severe and cold, that 
no great defection toward either the Catholics or Episcopalians 
occurred upon their establishing work in the islands. Defec- 
tion to them did come later but it was on political, not litur- 
eical or theological grounds. 


Missionaries Too Secular ? 


The third criticism launched against the missionaries was 
that they left their religious functions and controlled the 
government. This needs no further refutation than has 
already been given in what has been said about the splendid 
service rendered by men lke Dr. Judd, Richards, Armstrong 
and Andrews in entering government employ. It was abso- 
lutely necessary to protect the natives from exploitation by 
the unscrupulous, or conquest by the greedy. Here again 
some qualification should be made. From the earliest days 
some of the most useful white men in government service — 
men like Robert Wyllie and Chief Justice Lee — were not 
missionaries. Moreover from 1854 to 1872 no missionary was 

* The hoike is a characteristic feature of Hawaiian church life in which the 
Sunday schools gather in a sort of convention, often lasting all day, in which 
by recitation, song or simple pageantry they review the lessons of the quarter. 
A feast, or luau, crowns the occasion and makes it a great social event. It 


should be noted that the Sunday school contains the whole family in most 
cases, not just the children. 


“APURYSUYD puvlpsug 
MON Aq WHO} OFUL poplouUl sTeIioyVUL oATZVU Jo JOQUIAS V— [e109 Jo Y[ING ‘poatiIV sotIvUOISsTU OY} Io}je sivot QZ ATWO ‘OFST ynoqge pepooigy 


ONTO TONOH “HOUNHO OVHVIVMVS 


‘o10yg 40yDg “f *Y 


> 





flistorical and Missionary Background oh 


in the cabinet and only for comparatively brief periods are 
missionary descendants found in the cabinets of Kalakaua 
who reigned from 1874 to 1891, whereas during this period 
great influence was held by such definitely anti-missionary 
leaders as Walter M. Gibson, Bush, Moreno and Claus 
Spreckels. 

Did Missionaries Exploit Natives ? 

The most serious charge against the missionaries, hinted at 
by Manley Hopkins, and growing in volume with the pros- 
perity of the islands and the consequent prosperity of the 
missionary descendants, is that, as Satan said of Job, they 
did not serve God for naught — that they and their descen- 
dants became immensely wealthy at the cost of exploiting the 
natives and cheating them out of their lands. This accusa- 
tion is not often put in print but it is a whispered gossipy 
insinuation which deserves to be brought out into the open 
and dealt with squarely. The answer is this: with possibly 
one exception, none of the original missionaries ever became 
rich. Up to 1876 Hawaii was a land of relative poverty and 
all were poor together. The missionaries did, however, get 
legislation from the king giving to the Hawaiian people, for 
the first time in their history, the definite private ownership 
of their lands. On the basis of this legislation the mission- 
aries, because they had the technical skill, largely made the 
surveys and helped the natives secure their homesteads. 


Legitimate Business Enterprise 

After 1876 the reciprocity treaty with the United States 
made sugar production profitable, although at first, and in- 
deed even now, the sugar business had a large element of risk 
and adventure in it. In the development of this sugar indus- 
try some of the descendants of missionaries took a proper and 
legitimate part along with other distinctly non-missionary 
business men like James Campbell, Claus Spreckels, The- 
ophilus Davies and others. 


3¢ The Human Side of Hawau 


Hawaiian Business Standards 


Out of this industrial enterprise some of them gained wealth 
—not all. The wealth thus secured was the legitimate re- 
ward, under the capitalistic and competitive system which 
obtained, for their enterprise, industry, foresight and inven- 
tiveness. They tunneled mountains, built irrigation ditches 
to bring water from the wet to the dry side of the island, de- 
veloped sugar machinery, risked money, lost money and made 
money. The prosperity they brought to the country raised 
the economic level generally and made it possible for many 
natives to rent their lands and live on the income. The im- 
provident sold them but, so far as I can trace, under no pres- 
sure or undue influence. But it should be remembered that 
a very large part of the land brought into cultivation by iri- 
vation had been absolutely useless and valueless before. 
There was no reason why these men should not indulge in 
business enterprises just because their fathers or grandfathers 
had been missionaries. Neither the ministry nor the mis- 
sionary service is hereditary. We have no caste system. In 
1894 The Friend gave the names of eighteen men and ten 
women, descendants of the missionaries, whose vocation was 
religious work —a very commendable proportion. Those 
who went into industrial activities, judged by the standards of 
their day, were upright business men. There is practically no 
watered stock in Hawaii and its business ethics has averaged 
higher than on the mainland. 





About Waralua Plantation 

A story related by Mr. W. R. Castle has point just here. 
He says: “ Mr. Goodale, manager of Waialua Plantation, was 
on the train to Honolulu with his rent and other books to 
report to the treasurer. There was a fine appearing gentle- 
man on the train, looking out of the car window, quietly but 
sarnestly, who suddenly exclaimed, turning to, Mr. Goodale, 
‘These are wonderful lands! What an awful shame that the 


Historical and Missionary Background BO 


missionaries stole all of their lands! The Hawaiians might be 
independently well off if they only had their rightful property! ’ 
Mr. Goodale said, ‘ There must be some mistake about what 
you say. fortunately I am just going up to Honolulu to 
talk over rent matters. I have my books here and there is 
no reason why you should not look at them.’ So he opened 
his books and the sympathetic gentleman eagerly sat down 
beside Mr. Goodale and looked on with surprise as he turned 
page after page filled with Hawaiian names of land owners 
with the record of their lands and the amounts to be paid 
each year to them, a total each year of over $30,000! He im- 
patiently and suspiciously exclaimed, ‘ There must be some 
mistake, for my informant is an old and reliable white resident 
who has been here many years and knows whereof he speaks! ’ 
‘May I ask,’ said Mr. Goodale, ‘ who your informant is? for 
I may be able to convince him of his error, at least, so far as 
Waialua is concerned!’ But the gentleman refused to name 
him, saying that he had particularly requested not to be 
named! Mr. Goodale then told the man that what he said 
about Waialua was generally true with regard to the planta- 
tions throughout the country. But, as Mr. Goodale told me, 
the gentleman (?) looked unhappy and seemed inclined to 
stick to the facts as related by that ‘ old and reliable white 
resident.’ ”’ 


Plantation Labor 


Of course, from the standpoint of our modern social con- 
science the labor policy of the plantations in days gone by, 
like the labor policy of New England factories, is subject to 
criticism.* 


* “Tn reference to ‘ the labor policy of the plantations in days gone by,’ as 
being subject to criticism, it rather seems to me that the abuse of the then 
existing laws of the land might be considered the subject of criticism. The 
labor laws were the fruits of the work of the king and his counsellors away 
back in the ’30’s before ‘ plantations’ existed as they are today, and whether 
good or evil, those who employed labor were bound by such laws. The laws 
were made for the laborer and if he chose to make a vicious use of the law, he 


36 The Human Side of Hawau 


But, as Mr. W. R. Castle points out in the note below, it 
is only fair to suggest that this criticism should be directed 
not so much at the policy of the plantation as at the laws of 
the government, for the plantations, of course, had to operate 
under these laws. Labor in primitive times had been forced 
labor at the command of the king and the chiefs. The adop- 
tion of labor laws modeled after shipping laws of the day (the 
only labor laws with which they had any experience) was both 
natural and a definite step forward. The second note printed 
below gives the judgment on this legislation of Paul Scharren- 
burg who visited the islands in 1922 as special representative 
of Samuel Gompers,* and gives an interesting reaction upon 
it from the labor point of view. 














could accomplish much evil. It is a fact that such use was made; such as 
‘shipping’ on a labor contract, to get the large advance wage, and then ship- 
ping away or deliberately violating the agreement by pretending to work while 
in fact doing almost nothing. The result of these conditions produced a 
thorough aversion to the law on the part of most employers. The laws of 1842, 
found in Thurston’s Fundamental Laws of Hawaii, are well worth study and are 
most interesting reading. They set forth clearly the growth of Hawaii from a 
despotism to a government of laws. It is no doubt a fact that the whole system 
of labor contracts in writing signed by the parties is the outgrowth of the 
‘shipping’ laws and customs which controlled the relations of the owners and 
masters of ships with the ships’ ‘ hands.’ ”’ 
W. R. Castle. 


* “* As early as 1846, the minister of the interior of the kingdom of Hawaii 
was authorized to seize vagrants and to apprentice them out for a term of not 
more than one year. Two-thirds of the wages were to be paid to the vagrant 
and one-third was to go to the government. The master was permitted to use 
‘coercive force’ if the vagrant refused to work. 

“In 1850 it was made unlawful for a native of the islands to emigrate to 
California. At the same time the legislative assembly legalized two forms of 
labor contracts theretofore unknown in the islands, namely, (a) Apprentice- 
ship, for boys and girls under 20; and (b) Indentured service, for any person 
over 20 years of age. 

These contracts were harsh, unjust and entirely one-sided. They provided 
for ‘capture on desertion’ and ‘imprisonment and hard labor until he will 
consent to serve according to contract.’ Strange to relate, the historians agree 
that these penal contract laws were ‘an adaptation of the American shipping 
law.’ 

“In fact, when, in 1873, in the case of John H. Wood vs. Afo, the validity 
of this iniquitous contract labor system was attacked in the courts and carried 
for a final ruling to the Hawaiian supreme court, that august body said: 


Historical and Missionary Background ot 


With annexation to the United States the general Ameri- 
can laws with regard to immigration and contract labor be- 
came of course operative in Hawaii also while the awakening 
of the plantations in recent years to welfare work of a modern 
type and the wonderfully generous support given to all forms 
of social and religious work by the descendants of the mission- 
aries, have placed Hawaii well to the front in the list of 
American communities with a wholesome social conscience. 
It is a very definite bit of evidence that on the present Re- 
habilitation Commission we have the Hawaiian pastor of 
Kawaiaho, the oldest missionary church in the islands, and 
as executive secretary a descendant of Amos Starr Cooke, the 
missionary teacher of the early days. 


Missionary Descendants 


While some few descendants of the missionaries have de- 
parted from the ideals of their fathers and have been recreant 
to their responsibilities, on the whole these descendants are 
today a group of remarkably conscientious, public-spirited, 
religiously and morally responsive people. Most of them 








“This statute was enacted, of course, in reference to the business of the 
country. The productions of the country must be gathered and secured, or 
manufactured when secured, and if neglected, they deteriorate and are essen- 
tially damaged, and the law in question is designed to prevent persons from 
wilfully violating their contracts and doing damage to their employers. It is, 
in degree, as essential to the sugar planter that his employes should remain 
with him to perform the service as agreed upon during the crop, as it is for the 
seaman to remain on the ship during the voyage. <A sugar plantation encoun- 
ters as many adverse winds as a vessel, and it is quite as likely to be endangered 
in crop time as a vessel is on a lee shore, when all hands are required. In many 
countries where labor is plenty and heavy advances are not necessary to pro- 
cure laborers, this law is not necessary. But the legislature in their wisdom 
passed the law as applicable to the condition of affairs here.’ 

‘Subsequent court decisions upheld this singular logic, and as late as 1892, 
the legislature reenforced the penalties for ‘ desertion from service.’ Vested 
property rights came first — human freedom trailed behind. 

““ Under these harsh laws, in force from 1850 to 1897, plantation labor became 
more and more restive, although the world was scoured for immigrants to re- 
place those who had completed their ‘ term of service’ and moved tu countries 
where conditions of service were less onerous.”’ 


‘90UBI UL UOTIOV UL paT[Ty Aoq osoutyD 


-UBVIIBMBP] B ‘Ney Nedy Jo odolAros [BIOUN LT 
MIOTONOH HOU a 


SHNIHO SYALAd “LS YOrMULNI 






OD o1oyud «19 





eae eR 
Pronex ne 8 





Tlistorical and Missionary Background 29 


sincerely believe and exemplify in their lives the motto of 

Hawaii, spoken by the good king, Kamehameha III, in an 

hour of national deliverance; ‘‘ Ua mau ke ea o ka ainai ka 
” 

pono!” ‘“ The life of the land is preserved by righteousness! ”’ 


CHAPTER II 


HAWAII’S MIDDLE PERIOD OF “REACTION; 
TURMOIL AND COMPLICATION 


A Neglected Period 

Periods of reaction are not as thrilling or superficially as 
edifying as periods of romantic achievement, yet they may 
have very important lessons to teach and they often hold the 
key to a better understanding of the subsequent movements 
of history. Having glanced at a picture of the romantic and 
constructive era in Hawaiian history which culminated about 
1860, we must now go on to the very much less heroic period 
of reaction and increasing complication which followed it. 
Many of the books which are available about Hawaii treat 
the early romantic period very fully but no adequate study of 
the almost equally important reactionary period has yet 
appeared. Most public addresses ignore it altogether or slur 
over it very superficially. One would be led to think that 
nothing important happened between the early missionary 
triumphs and the annexation to the United States. This 
may be because the events are too recent to be dealt with 
frankly, or because no scholar like Prof. W. D. Alexander has 
yet arisen to organize and analyze the events of this difficult 
troubled time as the events of the earlier days have been 
~analyzed and organized. 


Decadence Sets In 
Be that as it may, it will be increasingly clear to any care- 
ful student of Hawaii that, beginning about 1865, a very 
interesting and instructive period of reaction and decadence 
set in, at the end of which, about 1900, we find, instead of a 


Middle Period of Reaction and Turmoil 4] 


homogeneous united people with a normal Christian civiliza- 
tion and over a third of the population members of churches, 
a nation which has been repaganized by an inundation of non- 
Christian peoples, and by the influence of un-Christian whites 
as well, while the Hawaiians themselves have partially re- 
verted to heathenism, and distrust and race prejudice have 
replaced much former kindliness and good will. 


Population Decrease 

What were the divisive and destructive agencies that caused 
this period of reaction? There were many such agencies and 
they were often curiously intertwined. One basic source of 
trouble was a seriously decreasing population. Contact with 
civilization, especially its diseases and vices when combined 
with their own vices and weaknesses, proved too much for 
the Hawaiian people. Captain Cook in 1778 estimated the 
population of the islands at 400,000 but this was probably 
too high. When the missionaries arrived the ebb-tide of 
population was already on. In 1823 they estimated the popu- 
lation at 142,000. The census of 1832 showed only 130,000, 
that of 1836, 108,000, and by 1866, thirty years later, it was 
reduced to 58,000 — only a little more than half of what it 
had been thirty years before. The low-water mark in popu- 
lation was reached in 1872 when there were only 56,800 people 
in the Islands of whom 47,500 were Hawaiians. (Note, by 
way of contrast, that today, by the census of 1920, there are 
over 250,000 people in Hawaii of whom only 23,000 are pure 
Hawaian and 18,000 more part-Hawaiian. Of the remain- 
ing 210,000 the great bulk are Orientals.) Now this con- 
stantly declining population must have had a most dishearten- 
ing and depressing effect on all forms of human enterprise, 
and it had the very practical result of so decreasing the num- 
ber of the tax-payers that the government — meager and 
poverty-stricken little government that it was— began to 
find itself menacingly in debt. 


49, The Human Side of Hawau 


Not Due to Missionaries 

It is probably necessary to emphasize the fact that the 
coming of the missionaries was in no wise responsible for this 
decline in population. It took place even more rapidly in 
islands to which no missionaries came, and it was already well 
under way in Hawaii before the missionaries arrived. If 
missionary advocacy of clothes had some small adverse 
effect on health, — the clothes being worn wet or dry, clean 
or dirty when once aequired — this is more than offset by 
the effectiveness of missionary influence in decreasing drunk- 
enness, and rendering medical assistance. The real causes 
of this decreasing population are a complex of the white man’s 
weapons which made war more deadly, the white man’s rum, 
the white man’s diseases and the white man’s influence in 
destroying tabus, some of which were unconsciously based on 
sound sanitary experience. 


Industrial Depression 

Along with this population decline went an economic de- 
pression. The story of Hawaii’s industry, as Professor Mac- 
Caughey has pointed out, has been the story of a tree, an 
animal and a plant. The tree was sandalwood — the great 
article of export which was shipped to China in great quan- 
tities in the early days. So feverishly did the chiefs compel 
the people to cut sandalwood that by 1825 it was becoming 
extinct and it is now commercially unobtainable in the islands. 
Then came the period when prosperity depended on an ani- 
mal — the whale which, it may be noted incidentally, is a 
mammal and not a fish. From 1820 onward great fleets of 
whaling ships, mostly American, brought prosperity to the 
Islands by their purchases of supplies. But the Civil War, 
and a later disaster in the Arctic Ocean, wrought havoe with 
the whaling fleet and the kerosene lamp made whale-oil almost 
a curiosity, so that by 1870 the whaling fleet had ceased to 
be an economic resource and the Islands were left without an 


Middle Period of Reaction and Turmoil 43 


occupation or a market; for the plant, the sugar-cane, upon 
which Hawaii’s third era of economic prosperity depends, 
did not become the dominant industrial factor until the reci- 
procity treaty of 1876 opened the American market to Ha- 
Wailan sugar free of duty. 


Rufus Anderson’s Mistake 


On the missionary side the most unfortunate event of the 
sixties was the decision of the American Board to withdraw 
from active work in the Islands and to turn the churches over 
to their native members and native pastors with the expec- 
tation that, being now completely Christianized, they could 
manage their own affairs along the usual lines of Congrega- 
tional church organization in America. This movement was 
not made without misgivings and vigorous protest by a 
majority of the missionaries. But Rufus Anderson, an aged 
and strong-willed secretary of the American Board, came out 
to Hawaii in 1863 and, after studying the field, decided the 
time had come to graduate the Hawaiian Mission into a self- 
governing, self-perpetuating group of churches. He was an 
able man, and he was pressed by the cramping conditions of 
the Civil War and the urgent needs of the greater populations 
in the vast non-Christian world beyond, but nevertheless the 
policy which he practically forced on the missionaries was 
premature and it resulted disastrously. 


Premature Independence 


Completely successful as the missionary work seemed to a 
superficial observer, it was in fact not yet thoroughly rooted. 
It needed many years of careful supervision and guidance. 
This was practically withdrawn in 1864. The great churches 
were subdivided into smaller ones under native pastors and, 
as the elderly missionaries dropped away, their places were 
filled by natives. Things might have gone better, even so, 
had the rulers remained staunchly Christian as in the early 


‘ZUIPUGIS ST SSOIO OY} GIOYM YOdS OY} UO SoUIT} USP[O UT poraZO 910M SOOBHOVS uBun pT 
M-lNg SB UMOTY A[UILOJ NTNOUOH jo Yyouq ysnf ouoo oTUBOTOA JOUT}XO UB — [Moqyoung jo 4s8e10 0Y} UO 


MOIAUAS ASIUNOS UALSVA 


“QOYLIOVS JO [II] oy} ‘BUTE 


"010Y q 9YDT 





Middle. Period of Reaction and Turmoil 45 


days. The remarkably swift conversion of the Hawaiian 
people had been partly due to the fact that they followed their 
rulers into the Christian church. But when, in the persons 
of Kamehameha V and Kalakaua, rulers arose who were not 
at heart truly Christian, but were themselves inclined to re- 
vert to heathenism, then it was easy for large numbers of the 
people to follow the royal example back to heathenism. 


Reversion to Heathenism 


This reversion to heathenism was not a revival of the old 
temple worship of the heiaus or of the great gods, but rather 
a revival of the undergrowth of superstition which goes under 
the general name of kahunaism. The Hawaiian ‘“ kahuna ”’ 
is a sort of medicine man. The ‘ kahuna lapaau’’ weaves 
charms, foretells events, gives advice and cures disease and, 
most sinister of all the ‘‘ kahuna ana ana” prays people to 
death. The kahuna’s work is efficiently commercialized and 
he requires to be well fed and paid in order to work well. 
Now the heart of kahunaism in its grip upon the Hawaiian 
people was its program of mental healing — though it did not 
use any such abstract terminology. 


Kahunaism and Medicine 

As the Rev. James Bicknell, a stalwart crusader against 
kahunaism, has brought out, the power of the kahuna lay in 
the fact that his religion was a religion of the body, that he 
set out to cure disease. So long as the Hawaiian was well, 
Christianity satisfied his moral and religious needs, but when 
he got sick the old heathen fears and heathen practices came 
trooping in. We can see now that one fatal shortcoming in 
the early missionary program was the lack of thorough-going 
medical instruction. There were doctors among the mis- 
sionaries and they rendered heroic service, but there were not 
enough of them to reorganize the medical customs of a nation 
and train them in hygiene and scientific medicine. But the 


46 The Human Side of Hawau 


idea of well-organized medical missions had not at that time 
appeared upon the horizon and the Hawaiian work suffered 
greatly for lack of it. If there is one definite contribution 
our Hawalian experience has to make to the technique of 
forelgn missions among primitive peoples, it is the fundamen- 
tal importance of medical missions. Religion and medicine 
are intimately related in the primitive mind. James Bick- 
nell has very keenly observed that Kamehameha IV gave the 
people a hospital and all would have been well had Kame- 
hameha V given them a medical school to provide trained 
doctors. But, instead, that vigorous but, alas, reactionary 
king authorized the lheensing of kahunas in 1865 and from 
that time the reversion to heathenism was on. Every mis- 
sionary now had a village kahuna leensed by the government 
working over against him. 


Kahunaism and Demonology 


One cannot but wonder if the failure to deal effectively 
with kahunaism was not also due, in part, to the theory of 
Biblical infalibility which the missionaries naturally held and 
taught to their converts. If you hold to the verbal inspira- 
tion and literal infallibility of the Bible you are pretty clearly 
forced to accept a large and complicated demonology. What 
the missionary’s theory of the Bible compelled him theoreti- 
cally to subseribe to, the kahuna demonstrated and used for 
personal profit by working on the superstitious fears of the 
credulous. Of course it should be clearly understood that the 
missionaries to Hawaii are not in any sense to be blamed for 
their failure to possess a modern conception of the Bible. 
They used the best scholarship and the truest doctrine of 
Scripture they knew. They were progressive, forward- 
looking, scholarly men, the kind of men who, if they were 
living today, would gladly accept and welcome modern view- 
points. They were not reactionaries or timid traditionalists 
in their day and would not be in ours. Here, then, is possibly 


Middle Period of Reaction and Turmoil 47 
another contribution which Hawaii can make to the tech- 
nique of missions, namely, that the modern missionary should 
be emancipated from the old narrow ideas of verbal inspira- 
tion, should recognize that the Word of God is progressive, 
erowing and contemporary, and includes the best modern 
scientific truth. We no longer believe in demons even if 
the men who wrote portions of the Bible did believe in them. 
But, on the other hand, we believe that what the best medi- 
cine and best psychology have to say about insanity, nervous 
diseases, obsessions, habits, suggestion and hypnotism is an 
important part of the missionary’s equipment. 

This revival of heathenism, begun by Kamehameha V in 
licensing kahunas in 1865, was carried much further by Kala- 
kaua who in 1886 credentialed what was euphoniously called 
an “‘ Hawaiian Board of Health,” but was really an official 
organization of the kahunas. Kalakaua also organized a 
secret order, a travesty on masonry called the ‘“‘ Hale Naua.”’ 
This organization, according to W. D. Alexander, “ appears 
to have been intended partly as an agency for the revival of 
heathenism, partly to pander to vice, and indirectly to serve 
as a political machine.” 


Princess Ruth and Pele 


How dangerous and widespread this revival of heathenism 
was can be illustrated by the dramatic scene enacted near Hilo 
in 1881 when a terrible lava flow was approaching the city. 
For three hundred days it had been pouring down the moun- 
tain side. Almost to the edge of the city it came. Then 
Princess Ruth arrived from Honolulu, a platform was built 
in the very path of the flow, the Hawaiian princess, who 
weighed about 300 pounds, mounted it, sacrifices of pigs, 
chickens and brandy are said to have been offered to Pele, 
the voleano goddess, and the princess on her knees appealed 
to Pele to spare Hilo. And then the flow stopped and the 
town was saved! People who like to test God by direct 


48 The Human Side of Hawau 


answers to prayer, have much food for thought in an incident 
like that. But it went a long way toward neutralizing in 
people of childlike minds the brave deed of Kapiolani some 
fifty-seven years before when she threw stones into Kilauea 
and defied Pele to her face. 


Another Version 

The story of Princess Ruth’s stopping the lava flow at Hilo 
in 1881, just given, is the current popular version. As an 
interesting side-light on the difficulties of the historian in 
getting at the exact details of events even as recent as 1881, 
it may be added that a well-known citizen of Honolulu in- 
sists that the brandy was not really sacrificed but that Simon 
Kaai drank it up and filled the bottles with water! The most 
circumstantial and authoritative account of all is contained in 
the following extract of a letter to the author by Dr. Arthur 
C. Alexander: 

“T have just had an interview with Oliver Stillman, an old 
schoolmate and friend of mine who was an assistant to Simon 
Kaai, business manager for Ruth Keelikolani. He related to 
me the incident of the so-called ‘ Stopping of the lava flow of 
1881’ about as follows: 


‘The old lady took a notion into her head that she 
would go up to the flow and try to stop it. - At her request, 
I hired a hack from an old native named Hao and also 
purchased for her a bottle of brandy and all the red ban- 
dana handkerchiefs I could at Aiona’s store. There 
were about 15 or 20 of us who went up. We tied the red 
handkerchiefs about our heads and necks. The old lady 
rode in the hack with Simon and myself. We drove up 
to the Halai Hills as far as we could and then walked 
over a short distance to the flow. She prayed in Hawaian 
to Pele, asking her to save the land, etc. While she was 
praying, Simon asked me for a corkscrew and I pulled 


Middle Period of Reaction and Turmoil 49 


the stopper out of the brandy bottle — it made a loud 

‘“ yop ”’ which she evidently heard and as she was a woman 

of violent temper, I thought I was going to catch it, so I 

quickly took the corkscrew out of the cork and put the 

stopper back in the bottle — and, we did not drink any 
of the brandy. 

‘She kept on praying and when she had finished, she 
took the bottle of brandy and poured it on the lava and 
took the red handkerchief off her head and threw it on 
the flow and gathered all the other handkerchiefs and 
threw them on also. There was no sacrifice of any white 
pigs or chickens as commonly reported. 

‘ After this, we went to the Halai Hills where a camp 
of tents had been set up for us and where we had a pig 
that had been previously roasted in Hilo for us.’ 

“T have not quoted this in Mr. Stillman’s exact words and 
have omitted some of the details of the story, but I have 
stated it practically as he told it to me and I think I can 
vouch for the truth of the story. Mr. Stillman added: ‘ By 
golly, the flow stopped at that point and did not flow a foot 
TaELners @ 


Kalakaua’s Opinion 

It was about this time that Kalakaua, just returned from 
his trip around the world, is reported by Sereno E. Bishop to 
have said: ‘‘ I have seen the Christian nations and observed 
that they are turning away from Jehovah. He represents a 
waning cause. Shall we Hawaiians take up the worship of a 
god whom foreigners are discarding? The old gods of Hawaii 
are good enough for us.’’ Kalakaua’s revival of heathenism, 
which was largely for political purposes, was by no means 
theological alone — one of its most vicious manifestations, 
still here to humiliate and misrepresent Hawaii to the world, 
was his revival and patronage of the hula in its most obscene 
and repulsive forms. Practical heathenism means a vicious 


0 The Human Side of Hawan 


trinity of superstition, debauchery and ignorance. It is to 
the credit of the Hawaiian churches that, weakened and torn 
with dissensions as they were, they did make a stand against 
Kalakaua’s heathenism and debauchery. 


Catholics Arrive 

This revival of heathenism was met less effectively than it 
ought to have been because of the unfortunate divisions in 
Christianity caused by the coming in of various denomina- 
tions. The Roman Catholics had come first as early as 1827 
but were unfavorably regarded by the natives who, having 
destroyed their own idols, were prejudiced against the Catho- 
lies’ use of images, counting it a form of idolatry. It is to the 
credit of the missionaries that they remonstrated with the 
chiefs for persecuting the Catholics and finally, under Mr. 
Richards’ influence, an edict of toleration was issued June 17, 
1839. Less than a month later a French frigate arrived de- 
manding a church site be given to French Catholic priests and 
$20,000 be deposited as a guaranty that they would be well 
treated. Subsequent French warships demanded repeal of 
laws prohibiting importation of wines and liquors. Thus the 
Catholic mission started in 1840 with a show of force and under 
conditions making it unpopular with the chiefs. It has over- 
come this early handicap, however, and is today a useful and 
ereatly respected element in our Hawaiian community life. 
It is interesting to note that this Catholic mission, begun under 
French protection, still remains largely foreign. The priests, 
usually very faithful and devoted men, are mostly Belgians 
or Germans from the University of Louvain, though the 
schools are carried on by American teaching brothers from 
Dayton, Ohio, and sisters from Syracuse, N. Y. By the cen- 
sus of 1896, 32 per cent of the Hawaiians reported themselves 
Catholics, 50 per cent Protestants and 17 per cent Mormons. 
The growth of the Catholics and Mormons was rapid in the 
Revolutionary period of the nineties when definite propa- 


Middle Period of Reaction and Turmoil OL 


ganda was made by the royalists to win the Hawaiians away 
from the historic missionary churches. The Catholic popu- 
lation today is claimed by them to be 68,000 which includes 
practically all the Portuguese and Filipino colonies and 12,000 
Hawauans. No Hawaiian has ever been ordained a priest, 
so far as I know, and very few Orientals are Catholics. 


Mormon Missionaries 

The Mormons, arriving in 1850, were the next missionary 
movement to reach the Islands. They worked with varying 
success until the political troubles of the revolution turned 
more and more Hawaiians toward them. The Mormons in 
Hawaii, though a mission from Salt Lake City, have never 
sought to establish polygamy here and have confined their 
efforts exclusively to the Hawaiians who they claim are sons 
of Lehi, being Lamanites like the American Indians. Con- 
siderable prosperity has come to them of late years through 
the possession of a profitable plantation at their colony at 
Laie where they have erected a beautiful temple costing over 
$200,000. Their influence on the Hawaiian people under 
their sway seems to have been good, on the whole, tending to 
sobriety and industry. There are now estimated to be 11,000 
Mormons. Their responsible leaders are all white men and 
their work is ruled by an iron-clad system and reenforced by 
a constant stream of young missionaries sent out from Utah 
on three-year terms who live among the Hawaiians native 
style, learn the language and carry on a persistent prosely- 
tizing campaign. There is much in Mormon missionary 
methods that is worth study by other bodies. 


Why Mormonism ? 

Here again, as in the case of kahunaism, a modernist in 
religion may well inquire whether the emphasis laid on Bib- 
lical infallibility may not have had something to do with the 
large defection of the native Hawaiians to Mormonism. For 


QNTOTONOH UVAN FIVI LV fId NHL NOWHYOW FHL 


‘OLOU SUDIIU AY 





Middle Period of Reaction and Turmoil D8 


Mormonism is essentially a parasitic religion. It never pio- 
neers into non-Christian regions and it only seeks to convert 
those who are already converted to some form of Christianity. 
With its great emphasis on miracles, the lost ten tribes, second 
coming of Christ and the literal fulfilment of prophecy, Mor- 
monism has a great leverage with people brought up to believe 
in a literalistic type of Biblical interpretation. The only 
really adequate guard against Mormonism, as I see it, is a 
thoroughgoing understanding of the history and nature of the 
Bible as made plain by modern historical study. Higher 
criticism of an equally honest and thoroughgoing sort applied 
to the Book of Mormon would make short work of its childish 
hocus-pocus about gold plates written in “ reformed Egyp- 
tian ’”’ characters and would reveal the fraudulent character 
of documents like its alleged ‘‘ Book of Abraham.’’? Given 
a theory of verbal infallibility, and the Mormons have the 
best of the argument, for they have all the Scripture anybody 
else has and the inspired book of Mormon besides — with all 
the paraphernalia of sealing and baptism for the dead. But, 
if one has some modern scientific understanding of how the 
Bible grew and what it really is, and of the nature and source 
of its authority, as not in the letter but in the unfolding Spirit 
of God made manifest also in science and in every depart- 
ment of truth, why then the Book of Mormon also comes up 
for a candid examination and appraisal which it simply cannot 
survive. 


The Anglicans 

The next missionary arrivals were the Anglicans who came 
in 1863 on invitation of Kamehameha IV who had traveled in 
Europe and was much impressed with the Anglican forms and 
liturgy as better suited to a monarchy than the severe Puri- 
tan worship of the missionaries. This was doubtless quite 
sincere. The king, who was something of a mystic, made 
what is accounted by Hawaiian scholars to be a really beauti- 


o4 The Human Side of Hawau 


ful translation of the Book of Common Prayer into Hawaiian. 
His queen, the beloved and noble Queen Emma, was also 
under Anglican influence, having been brought up as a child 
in the home of Dr. Rooks, an English physician in Honolulu. 

The coming of the Anglican mission was, however, a divi- 
sive influence in the missionary situation, partly through the 
untactful personality of the first bishop, the Rt. Rev. T. N. 
Staley, and also partly through the loss of prestige to the his- 
toric churches of the missionaries when the king was no longer 
of their communion. The great old Coral Church at Hono- 
lulu, hitherto proudly called the ‘‘ King’s Chapel,” became 
known in the sixties simply as ‘f The Stone Church,” the name 
“ Kawaiahao Church ’”’ which it now bears not coming into 
general use until more recent years. But, as with the Catho- 
lics and Mormons, the greatest tide of Hawaiian members did 
not set in toward the Anglican church until the Revolutionary 
sympathies of the missionary descendants made the royalists 
favor other denominations. It is a happy thing to record 
that relations between the historic missionary churches and 
the Episcopalians have become more friendly with the passing 
of the years and are now most cordial and cooperative. 


Race Feeling 

In addition to the divisive agencies so far enumerated, 
there appears in the seventies a more sad and sinister thing and 
that is a tendency toward racial suspicion, bitterness and dis- 
like on the part of the Hawaiians toward the whites. This 
arose, in part, as resentment against foolish, thoughtless but 
alas quite characteristic American spread-eagle talk about 
annexation. It should be distinctly noted that at this time 
such agitation was disapproved of by the missionaries. Isa- 
bella Bird Bishop in her Letters from the Sandwich Islands 
writes in 1875: ‘An antagonism to foreign residents, or 
rather to their political influence, has grown rapidly. Some 
of the Americans had been unwise in their language and the 


Middle Period of Reaction and Turmoil a 


discussion on the proposed cession of Pearl River increased 
the popular discontent and the jealousy of foreign inter- 
ference in island affairs. ‘ America gave us the light,’ said 
a native pastor in a sermon which was reported over the 
islands, ‘ but now we have the light, we should be left to use 
it for ourselves.’ This sentence represented the bulk of the 
national feeling which, if particularly unenlightened, is in- 
tensely, passionately, almost fanatically, patriotic.” 


Segregation of Lepers 


This anti-foreign or, as we say in Hawaii, anti-haole feeling 
was aggravated by the necessary but painful policy of the 
segregation of lepers on Molokai, begun in 1866. Leprosy 
probably came from China — the Hawaiians call it mai pake, 
the Chinese sickness. While segregation was necesssary and 
was ostensibly a sanitary matter, it bore especially on the 
Hawaiians, for they were the great sufferers from leprosy, 
while very few white people ever contracted it. Thus what 
was sanitary precaution seemed in its operation to be a racial 
persecution. Happily this feeling died away in time as the 
Molokai Settlement came to be more wisely and efficiently 
administered. Now in our own day, through the separation 
by President Dean of the University of Hawaii of what is 
known as Dean’s Derivative of Chalmoogra Oil, results in 
the arrest and probable cure of leprosy are being obtained 
which are daily reducing this ancient scourge of humanity to 
scientific medical control. The population of the Leper 
Colony on Molokai is steadily decreasing and, instead of hid- 
ing victims of the disease, the Hawaiians now bring their 
children who develop leprosy to the Kalihi Receiving Station 
for treatment and cure. It is one of the great triumphs of 
modern medical science — and ought to be a mighty argument 
against kahunaism in the Hawaiian mind and against the more 
fanatical phases of mental healing and Christian Science in 
the American mind. 


“SOATIVJUISIIdEY JO osnoyFT oy} Aq posn st WOOI auOIY} OY, “ALOPTIIAT, oY} Jo [oydvo oy} Mou ‘eneyL[eVy Aq 4INg 
NINIONOH NI WOVIVd TVAOU AIO AHL 





Middle Period of Reaction and Turmoil OT 


Kalakaua’s Character 

This anti-foreign feeling on the part of the natives was also 
sedulously fanned into a flame for political purposes by Kala- 
kaua who reigned from 1874 to 1891. Here is one of the most 
interesting and at the same time most harmful personalities in 
all Hawaiian history. Personally affable and even charming 
on occasion, handsome and kingly in appearance, Kalakaua 
was nevertheless a licentious, selfish, intemperate, dishonest, 
politically meddlesome and utterly inefficient monarch. In 
1881 he made a trip around the world, immortalized in one 
of the funniest books of travel ever written, Arownd the World 
with a King, by William Nevine Armstrong, and came back 
with a lot of foolish notions about royalty. He imported a 
useless battery of artillery from Austria and arranged a spec- 
tacular coronation of himself to impress the Hawaiians. In 
1887 he acquired a warship and sent it to Samoa to make a 
treaty with those islands and thus begin a fantastic policy of 
‘‘ Hawaiian primacy in the Pacific.”” This ridiculous opera 
bouffe performance went to pieces through the drunken revels 
of the officers and crew and the whole thing ended as a farce. 


Policy of Debauchery 

All this might have been tolerated, as the vagaries of kings 
have been tolerated time and again, had not Kalakaua sought 
to reestablish the absolutism which Kamehameha III had 
voluntarily resigned for Constitutional government. I[ala- 
kaua was an elected monarch and not originally popular with 
the higher chiefs and conservative people. In order to pro- 
mote his design to destroy all constitutional limitations Kala- 
kaua therefore proceeded to debauch the Hawalian people. 
From early missionary days, and also under Kamehameha 
the Great, before that, there had been prohibition against 
selling liquor to natives. This, under Kalakaua’s influence, 
was repealed and the increase of liquor consumption may be 
measured by the increase in revenues from custom duties on 


He The Human Side of Hawan 


liquor; $58,000 in 1875 when prohibition to natives was still 
in force and $156,000 in 1880 after it had been removed. 
An eye-witness told me of visiting a Kalakaua political head- 
quarters where strong liquor was served by the tumblerful 
out of a wash-tub and the yard was full of Hawaiians lying 
around dead drunk. Thrum’s Annual says that the corona- 
tion in 1883 “ was followed by a period of nightly hula festi- 
vals that were a retrograde step to heathenism and a disgrace 
to the age.” The official program of these orgies contained 
words of hulas so indecent that the printer was actually 
arrested and fined $25 for publishing obscene literature. 


Revolution of 1887 
In 1886 occurred the notorious opium bribery case in which 
it was proved that Kalakaua promised a Chinaman an opium 
license for $71,000, received the money and then sold the 
license to a Hawaiian favorite of his. Such impossible con- 
duct by the king, especially in a country whose prosperity 
was going steadily forward under the development of the sugar 
industry and whose fundamental need was stable, enlightened 
eovernment, gave rise to the revolution of 1887 by which 
Kalakaua was compelled to promise to abstain from trying to 
influence either electorate or legislature, and to take no action 
without the authorization of his cabinet, which at the same 
time was made responsible not to the king but to the legis- 
lature. The upper house, instead of being appointed by the 
king, as heretofore, was from now on to be elected by those 
having a moderate property qualification. Thus a conserva- 
tive, genuinely constitutional government was assured. The 

king could reign but he could not rule. 


Monarchy Overthrown 


Kalakaua put up with this restraint as well as he could but 
when his successor, Queen Liliuokalani, proceeded to license 


Middle Period of Reaction and Turmoil og 


lotteries and proclaimed her purpose to overthrow the Consti- 
tution, a revolution again broke out which in 1893 resulted in 
the end of the monarchy, the establishment of the Republic 
of Hawaii and finally, in 1898, in annexation to the United 
States. Queen Liliuokalani continued to live at her home, 
“ Washington Place,’ and toward the end of her life became 
apparently reconciled to the situation and mellower in spirit. 
With the outbreak of the World War she displayed the Ameri- 
ean flag, subscribed to the Red Cross and even appeared in 
public on the same platform with Judge Dole, former Presi- 
dent of the Republic. 


Revolutionary Leadership 

Now, while there were many Hawaiians who heartily dis- 
approved of Kalakaua’s character and Liliuokalani’s action, 
the leadership in opposition to the monarchy was white and 
predominantly it was made up of descendants of the mission- 
aries and their friends and sympathizers — on the whole the 
most honorable, upright, law-abiding element in the Islands. 
They combined to a remarkable degree a preponderance of 
the brains, the wealth, the character and the enterprise in 
Hawaii. ‘There was no leadership on the side of royalty that 
could cope with them. 

My candid judgment, from personal acquaintance with 
many of them and careful study of the history of those troub- 
lous times, is that Lyman Abbott was quite correct when he 
said that if they had submitted to Liliuokalani’s plans “ they 
would have proved themselves unworthy to be descendants of 
Cromwell and Hampden, of Washington and Hancock.’ So 
far as I can see they sought no selfish preference for themselves 
— they did seek the absolutely necessary preservation of free 
institutions as against corruption and arbitrary monarchial 
rule. They sought this freedom for all — Hawaiians as well 
as haoles. To have submitted to Kalakaua’s foolishness or 
Lihuokalani’s arbitrary wishes could have led only to disaster. 


60 The Human Side of Hawan 


They served the future well by remembering that ‘ resistance 
to tyrants is obedience to God.” 


Not a Race Struggle 


There are those who interpret the struggle with Kalakaua 
and overthrow of Liliuokalani as a race struggle pure and 
simple. They think that the Hawaiian monarchy went down 
because it was a dark-skinned government in a community 
where the white man was gaining the preponderant influence, 
commercially, financially and educationally; that 1t goes to 
show that white people will not endure government by a 
colored race. 

A careful study of contemporary documents does not bear 
this theory out and I am strongly inclined to question it. 
There was an element of race prejudice, but it was on the 
other side. Kalakaua and his party played it for all 1t was 
worth as a political means of getting the Hawaiian people 
away from missionary influence. But the prejudice against 
the Hawaiian monarchy was due to its immorality, inefficiency 
and menacing reactionary spirit—not to the color of its 
skin. It must never be forgotten that the king’s most sinister 
and influential advisers — men like Moreno, W. M. Gibson 
and Paul Neumann — were white men, while a majority of 
the pastors of the Hawaiian missionary churches stood with 
the anti-monarchial party. The attempt to explain this 
period of Hawaiian history as simply an inevitable racial 
struggle is vitiated by the fundamental fallacy which is also 
at the bottom of such sinister books as The Passing of the 
Great Race and The Rising Tide of Color, namely, that a race 
is a unit and has a race character. This is not so. Every 
race has in it elements good and bad, weak and strong. The 
good elements in all races have a common cause and should 
stand together. It is the evil elements that raise the cry of 
racial solidarity and try to rally the race to one side as a clever 
bit of practical polities, even as Kalakaua tried to do. 


Middle Period of Reaction and Turmoil 61 


Churches Decline 

But all this political upheaval was not accomplished with- 
out a great temporary setback to the Hawaiian churches 
which, by the withdrawal of the American Board, had been 
left during this critical period without adequate white leader- 
ship. One can trace the religious difficulty of these times by 
extracts from the Annual Reports of the Hawaiian Board of 
Missions. In 1875 we read that the churches are everywhere 
declining. In 1879 out of 57 churches, 20 are pastorless and 
the report says: ‘“ The cry of leanness, of ‘ dry-bones,’ of 
barrenness, worldliness, stupidity and unbelief comes up like 
a wail of woe into our souls. ... The causes of declension 
in many of our Hawaiian churches are obvious: viz., the 
spread of skeptical sentiments, the rush after things that are 
seen and temporal, the physical fatigue of increased labor and 
the increasing indulgence in habits which weaken and de- 
moralize the higher powers of man.” 


Undertow of Heathenism 


In 1880 we read: ‘‘ From almost all the churches of the 
Western Hawaii Association there is reported the same story 
of indifference upon the part of church members and _ pre- 
vailing drunkenness among the people and too general in- 
difference to religion.’”’ (This was the year after Kalakaua 
secured the repeal of prohibition. ) 

In 1887 we find, out of 51 pastoral charges, that 28 are 
without ministers and that ‘“‘ the hindrances to the develop- 
ment of Christian growth among the churches have been 
steadily increasing.’”’? In 1890 we read: ‘‘ The past year has 
been one of political agitation. There has been a relaxing 
of general interest. <A certain spirit of antagonism has been 
bred, race prejudices fostered and the undertow of the heathen 
spirit quickened.”’ In 1896, for the first time in sixty years, 
the total number of converts fell below one hundred. 


‘OZST UL SUOISSITY JO pavog uvoLoury oY} Aq UNSOq YIOM OY} UO SoTL) YOTYM SUOISSITY JO plvOg UBIIVMB]T OY} JO SloJLeNbpvoyf{ 
ONIGTING TVIHONAWN NOISSIN 


‘010Y J 49Y0G “f °M 





Middle Period of Reaction and Turmoil 63 


Hbb-Tide 


Or you can measure this ebbing tide in another way. In 
the forty years before 1864, when the American Board turned 
the churches over to native control, they had received 53,500 
converts. During the next forty years they received only 
12,000 converts. In 1862 over one-third of the total popu- 
lation were members of the missionary churches — in 1902, 
forty years later, only 10 per cent of the Hawaiians were mem- 
bers of the historic churches — to say nothing of the vast 
mass of non-Christian Orientals who had come crowding in, 
repaganizing Hawaii in a generation. 


Brighter Days 

But let me hasten to add that brighter days were already 
dawning. This first gleam of dawn began in the later eighties 
with the opening of the Kamehameha Schools, the organiza- 
tion of Central Union Church and the awakening of the Ha- 
wallan Board to work for Chinese and Japanese. After 
annexation, as the Hawaiians found they had the franchise 
and as much political power as before, together with a pros- 
perous and stable social order, the old animosities of revolu- 
tionary days gradually died away and a new era of good 
feeling between the races came in. Under more active leader- 
ship and a more aggressive policy, the Hawaiian Board 
began to recover some of the ground which had been lost. 
During the five years from 1904 to 1909 a gain of 23 per cent 
was made in membership, and in the purely Hawaiian churches 
the gain was 26 per cent. In 1909 the total additions were 
727 or 10 per cent of the previous total membership, the 
largest addition on confession of faith since 1869. In 1915 
the beautiful Mission Memorial Building was dedicated as a 
headquarters for missionary work among all the races and in 
1920, the Hawaiian Board churches report a total member- 
ship of all races of 10,473. Of these 4,632 are Hawaiian or 
part-Hawalian — 11 per cent of all the people of Hawaiian 


64 The Human Side of Hawau 


blood in the Territory. It should also be added that, though 
depleted in membership by this era of turmoil and reaction, 
the Hawaiian churches have wonderfully retained their com- 
munity leadership and today furnish a very large proportion of 
the strongest and most hopefulleaders within the Hawaiian race. 


The Sugar Industry 


One other element in the complication of this period re- 
mains to be dealt with —the sugar industry and the vast 
immigration, largely Oriental, which resulted from it. The 
reciprocity treaty of 1876 with the United States made sugar 
a profitable industry. It had to be carried on in a wholesale 
fashion. Large companies were necessary to clear the land, 
build irrigation systems and erect and operate sugar mills. 
This meant an industrial revolution. From a nation of small 
agriculturalists, fishermen and sailors, Hawaii became a land 
of big sugar corporations. One pressing problem was to 
secure labor. The total population in 1872 was only 57,000 
and the Hawaiians were not well adapted temperamentally 
to sustained field labor in large gangs. 

Oriental Immigration 

From this need of large gangs of unskilled field labor re- 
sulted an immigration policy which in the twenty-three years 
from 1876 to 1899 brought into the territory over 120,000 
immigrants at a total cost in government appropriations of 
$1,500,000. Of these 120,000 new members added to Ha- 
waii’s happy family in practically twenty. years, 35,000 were 
Chinese, 68,000 Japanese, 3,000 South Sea Islanders, 11,000 
Portuguese, largely from the Azores Islands, and 2,000 EHuro- 
peans. | 

Add to these figures the facts that this mass of immigration 
was made up of contract laborers, many of whom became dis- 
contented with the labor conditions they found and left the 
plantations on the expiration of their contracts, and also that 
they were, except in the case of the Portuguese and Euro- 


Middle Period of Reaction and Turmoil 65 


peans, largely single men without their wives or families, and 
you can see what a tremendous social complexity and over- 
whelming religious problem was loaded onto a little nation 
quite ill-equipped either religiously or governmentally to deal 


nth it. x 
i Hawai Hopeful Today 


Yet out of the turmoil and confusion of Hawaii’s middle 
period has come the fascinating and hopeful Hawaii of today. 
The races have learned to get along together, partly because 
there were so many of them that none could afford to refuse 
to others the respect it demanded for itself. The labor con- 
ditions on the plantations have changed greatly for the better 
and are today undergoing marked improvement. The public 
schools, sound territorial government and the unifying in- 
fluence of the war with its ‘ drives,’ Red Cross work and 
education in patriotism have promoted Americanism. And, 
by no means least, the religious spirit has risen up in mani- 
fold ways to meet the challenge of modern conditions in a 
way that is worthy of the missionary pioneers. 


The Missionary Spirit 

Great credit for all this is due to the persistence of the 
essential missionary spirit in the descendants of the early 
missionaries. In no part of the United States is there a greater 
feeling of responsibility on the part of employers and mana- 
gers for labor — especially for the laborers of an alien race. 
The old missionary tradition of helpfulness manifests itself 
in plantation welfare work and socialized medical care, in 
endowed schools especially for Hawaiians and Orientals, in a 
remarkable program of social work in settlements, kinder- 
gartens and churches, and in an annual United Welfare Cam- 
paign which raises each fall some three hundred thousand | 
dollars in Honolulu alone for all manner of social service in- 
stitutions. All of this is largely supported financially by de- 
scendants of the missionaries and is all conducted without a 
trace of racial prejudice or the shghtest discrimination be- 
cause of nationality or color, 


JOJO] Uenvavpy [VAY oy} A[LoUTIOF — nyNfouoT] uy 
VO 'W'A AAVN GNV AWHYV FHL 





CHAPTER III 


PRESENT INTERRACIAL AND EDUCATIONAL 
PROBLEMS 


The importance of Hawaii is not in its past but in its pres- 
ent. The preceding chapters have emphasized its romantic 
missionary history and its troubled period of reaction and 
turmoil not for their own sake so much as to prepare the way 
for a better understanding of the living problem of today. If, 
by some cataclysm of nature, Hawaii had disappeared for- 
ever beneath the waves of the Pacific about 1900, the history 
sketched thus far might be interesting and instructive but it 
would have nothing like the point which it now has as form- 
ing the background to one of the most curious and conglomer- 
ate civilizations to be found anywhere on the face of the earth 
today. 

Interracial Laboratory 

As Prof. M. M. Scott has said, ‘‘ Hawaii is an ethnological 
museum and a sociological laboratory.” Here is a catalogue 
of the contents of this museum and the human raw materials 
of this laboratory according to the censuses of 1910 and 1920: 
































| Increase 
Race 1910 Per 1920 Per Since 1910 
Cent Cent Per Cent 

Tawa eee gee 0. 04-1 e185 e373 9.3 21S) oe 
Asiatic Hawaiian... 3,734 1.9 6,955 2. B22 1g moor 
Caucasian Hawaiian . 8,772 AO the LE OG 4.3 2,300 | 26.2 
LOnugicser eee eee 2 SOL i169 l| 227,002) elon 4 7OtS\) 21.0 
PortomRicanie oe. 3. oe 4.3890 205 5,602 AEA 712 |: 14.5 
Spanish . ee i PURO O el: Sy EOE 2,430 0.9 AAO | +221 
Other Caucasian (i. e., 

white American 

laree by) ieee eee 4S 7 rer 19,708 el A SANs N22) 
ii nesc emer ent? 1.6/4 Gime Le 23 507 9.2 1,833 8.4 
2 Daneseamr) (eee ween 0,0 Ovi toa 109 2745 OAD el 20RnGO e376 
PL pINO Mane ire a ete, OO L i 1 | 8:2: 11 18/670 1790.7 
KOreatgewh aaa 4 005 2.3 4,950 1.9 417 9.2 
INGEST: Mee Fh Ae 695 0.3 348 0.1 347° | 50.0 
A LO ULCT Sites ach aa 376 OEM: B10 0.1 OG Mk? 5 
Total population . . . 191,909 ZOD O12 64,003 | 33.3 








*Decrease. 


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Present Interracial and Educational Problems 69 


These figures may be brought more nearly up to date by the 
Board of Health estimate of July, 1923, that the total popu- 
lation is 298,500 of whom the Japanese number 120,590; 
Chinese 23,714; Filipinos 36,199; Hawaiians and_ part- 
Hawaiians 41,356; Koreans 5,608; Porto Rican 6,375; 
Portuguese 26,377; other Caucasians 35,744 (not including 
approximately 15,000 in military and naval service). 

This is a very interesting lot of raw material for a socio- 
logical laboratory, the numbers are large enough to be signifi- 
cant and at the same time small enough to be observed and 
studied intimately and the laboratory is located on a group of 
islands, 2000 miles from shore and as isolated as possible from 
the great continents bordering on the Pacific. It is not 
exactly a vacuum, for our laboratory is jarred and disturbed 
by mainland happenings, and yet we have a fairly indepen- 
dent character and mind of our own. 


Christian Background 

Moreover Hawaii is a sociological laboratory with a dis- 
tinctly Christian background, due to the heroic and successful 
labors of the noble group of missionaries who came to Hawaii 
when these islands were as obscure and remote from the cur- 
rents of human progress as Borneo or Celebes today. So 
far as they could tell, it made little difference to human his- 
tory whether they succeeded or failed. They little dreamed 
these islands would one day be at the focal point of the Pacific, 
working on problems whose hopeful solution would go far to 
establish the peace of the world or whose failure might seri- 
ously disturb it. But they did their work “not as men 
pleasers but as serving the Lord’”’ and, amid obscurity and 
hardships, they transformed a barbaric despotism into a 
civilized Christian state with a Bible, public-school system, 
constitutional government and a deep-rooted native church. 
Any one seeking a concrete argument for foreign missions 
would do well to come to Hawaii, see what the missionary 





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AABN puse AWIY 
SUIPNOUI Jou ‘UBISSN YY 
‘uvULIor) ‘YSlig ‘UBoOLIOULy 


Present Interracial and Educational Problems 71 


fathers did and then consider how different would be Hawaii’s 
situation today if all American Christians had said in 1819, 
“There is work enough to do at home. Why waste money 
on foreign missions? ”’ 


Changed Conditions 

Today we have in Hawaii a very different people from that 
with which the missionaries had to deal. They met an open- 
hearted, childlike race, its old religion already discredited and 
discarded, standing ready to accept the missionaries as mes- 
sengers of God. We deal not with one race, but half a dozen. 
The majority of our population come of a racial culture as 
old or older than our own, which feels, and acknowledges, no 
inferiority. The religion we face today is a great ethnic faith, 
Buddhism, reenforced by an alert priesthood and active 
organization, with a powerful national consciousness in the 
background. 


Subtle Opposition 

The missionaries had opposition but it was the definite, 
open and easily discredited opposition of the beach-comber 
and the dissolute sailor. Our opposition is more subtle and 
more sinister. It has good clothes and social standing, but 
it poisons the community steadily by its cynical contempt and 
suspicion of that race with whom we must learn to live as 
Christian brothers in a common American civilization. It 
sees our task, repudiates it and tries to rush us all headlong 
into the darkness of increasing prejudice and hostility and the 
ruthless use of force instead of persuasion. The ultimate 
goal of this spirt and policy is war, especially when dealing 
with a romantic, sensitive and high-strung race like the Japa- 
nese. This Jingo element in Hawaii is small, and ordinarily 
under cover, but it is here and, given the right conditions, 
would go into eruption. 





R:. J, Baker Photo. 
GIRLS OF SIX RACES 


Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Hawaiian, Porto Rican and Filipino (beginning at upper left) 





& 


9 


Present Interracial and Educational Problems 73 


No Race Prejudice 


One valuable result of our missionary background, however, 
is that there is in Hawaii a minimum of race prejudice. This 
is, of course, the very quality one would seek in a good inter- 
racial experiment station. It is also a very fortunate thing 
that Hawaii’s basic race is neither Caucasian, Negro nor Mon- 
gohan but the kind-hearted, tolerant, loveable Polynesian 
whose most characteristic contribution to present-day Hawaii 
is the spirit of “ aloha.’”’ Aloha means love, friendship, good 
will, how-do-you-do or good-bye as occasion demands, so per- 
vasive and all-embracing a word it is! The fact that the 
Hawaiian race has never been degraded or enslaved, but that 
its social standing has been maintained by kings and queens, 
and that the missionaries respected and inculeated respect in 
others for the native government, also contributes a very 
important favorable element to Hawaii’s interracial mental 
attitude. 


Race Mixtures 


The Hawauans are the basic race in more senses than one, 
for they have intermarried freely with both Caucasians and 
Chinese. The Japanese do not generally marry with other 
races but there will probably be an increasing mixture between 
the Hawaiians and the Filipinos, our latest strata of immigra- 
tion. These interracial combinations have been remarkably 
successful and, although the pure-blooded Hawalians are 
slowly decreasing (the rate of decrease was reduced last de- 
cade, however, to 8 per cent, from 12 per cent the decade 
before) the part-Hawaiians are rapidly increasing and are 
characterized in general by a hopeful combination of Chinese 
or Caucasian energy and ability with Hawaiian beauty and 
aloha. Rev. Akaiko Akana, pastor of Kawaiahao, our largest 
Hawaiian church, and graduate of Hartford Theological 
Seminary, 1s a striking example of the Chinese-Hawailan com- 
bination while Rev. Stephen Desha, a Congregational minister 


74 The Human Side of Hawan 


of Hilo and a senator as well, is an outstanding Hawatian- 
American. 
Here by Invitation 


The interracial situation in Hawaii is also favorably in- 
fluenced by the fact that all of the racial groups here repre- 
sented have come by invitation. None have pushed them- 
selves in. And you may add to this the fact that the very 
variety of races which we have makes it necessary that they 
should all accord to one another the tolerance and respect 
which they would claim for themselves. There is often safety 
in numbers and the very fact that we have half a dozen races 
instead of two probably simplifies our problem more than it 
complicates it. 

Interracial Athletics 

Athletics also contribute to a wholesome feeling of racial 
fellowship. A certain plantation started the season with 
several baseball teams on strictly racial lines. But, when the 
team was made up at the end of the season to play the cham- 
pionship game with the next plantation, it was an interracial 
composite based on athletic ability rather than racial origin. 
In a preliminary practise the captain a “ hapa-pake” or 
Chinese-Hawaiian called out: ‘‘ Hey, Lee Hop, you pitch 
and, Fuji, you catch, you Portugee on first base, Filipino on 
second, Kanaka on third and you haole (white man) play 
short!’ Then, turning with a grin to the plantation welfare 
worker, who was umpiring, he remarked philosophically: 
“All mix up like hell! ’’ Some of us hope it will be that way 
in heaven too! 

Respect for Orientals 

Certainly no open-minded American can live in Hawaii 
long without learning a deeper respect for the races of the 
Orient. The stalwart endurance of the Chinese, the courtesy 
and sensitiveness of the Japanese, the passionate national 
loyalty of the Koreans, and the capacity for hard work and 


Present Interracial and Educational Problems 75 


unquenchable thirst for education which characterize all 
three, put us Americans to shame, and sometimes make our 
young people seem very easy-going and superficial. Even in 
Punahou School, which is 90 per cent Caucasian, the Oriental 
group often lead in scholarship. I well remember an “ ora- 
torical contest ’’ where the prize went to a Chinese boy for a 
negro dialect selection! What chance did a _ red-headed 
American youth have against competition like that? 


Amalgamation 

The process of fusing all these different races together into 
a common Christian community is one of the most interesting 
social spectacles in the world. It needs to be seen to be 
understood. It involves, of course, obstacles and elements of 
discouragement. But in spite of all short-comings and limita- 
tions the great work is going on. The public schools are 
making the English language and American ideals and ways 
of thinking the common heritage of all our children and, in 
spite of about eighty Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines, it 
is Christianity that is advancing in its appeal to the younger 
generation. There is no lack of opportunity or responsive- 
ness to the work of our Hawaiian Board of Missions. The 
questions are all with us, the Christian leaders of Hawaii — 
our wisdom, our power to secure financial backing and trained 
workers, our ability to arouse the Christian community to 
see the visions and the opportunity. 


Three Americanization Stories 

Many stories might be told of this new Americanism. I 
will give just three. In June, 1921, it was my privilege to 
give the graduating address for a public school at Lahaina. 
The valedictorian, a Chinese boy, said in closing: ‘ Most of 
us come from homes of alien parents. But we are Americans. 
This is our country and our class motto ‘ To serve our country 
better’ is the personal motto of every member.’ I judged 


76 The Human Side of Hawan 


the racial make-up of the class to be Hawaiians 6, Chinese 2, 
Portuguese 2, Norwegians 2 and Japanese 12. But when I 
inquired about it from two different members of the class 
they could not tell me. They were all thinking of themselves 
simply as Americans and I had to go to a teacher for an 
answer to my question. Another story has to do with Jo 
the chauffeur for Kula Sanitarium. A friend of mine asked 
him: “ Jo, you aren’t pure Hawaiian, are you?”’ “ Oh, no,” 
he replied, ‘‘ my father was part-German and part-Portuguese 
and my mother was part-Hawaiian and part-Chinese.”’ 
“Well, Jo, what does that make you?” ‘Me? Oh, I’m 
an American!”’ It was also at Kula that an orchestra com- 
posed of three Filipinos, two Hawaiians, two Chinese-Ha- 
waiians, one Japanese and one Portuguese marched in an 
impromptu Armistice Day parade singing “ We’re going to 
show the Kaiser how the Yankee boys come through! ”’ 

Thus, in a general way, the outlook of our interracial ex- 
periment station is hopeful. But I want to go on now to say 
something more in detail about our educational, economic and 
religious problems and point out more adequately the deli- 
cacy and magnitude of our task in this Mid-Pacific social 
laboratory. 


Public Schools 


Edueationally our problem is this: Our public schools are 
crowded with 48,730 children of whom 55 per cent are Oriental 
— 23,947 Japanese alone. The Hawaiian and part-Hawalan 
children make up 18 per cent and the Portuguese another 18 
per cent while the American children in the public schools are 
only a fraction over 2 per cent. This small percentage of 
Americans is due to the fact that the bulk of the white chil- 
dren, especially in Honolulu, go to private schools like Puna- 
hou and the Honolulu Military Academy, which are almost 
entirely white, though Punahou, for the educational value of 
their presence, admits 10 per cent of selected Orientals. It 


Present Interracial and Educational Problems 77 


should be pointed out that the absence of American children 
from the public schools is almost entirely due to the language 
problem and is not due to race prejudice or snobbishness. 


Oriental Morals 

Most emphatically, it is not due to any fear of moral con- 
tamination from the Oriental children. As former superin- 
tendent of schools, H. W. Kinney, bears witness, the Oriental 
pupils give less trouble through offenses against decency or 
good morals than the average white children on the mainland. 
And, as every teacher in Hawaii knows, the Oriental pupil is 
docile, eager to learn, easy to discipline and very respectful 
to and appreciative of his teacher. If this were not so some 
of our schools, ike McKinley High in its terribly over-crowded 
condition, would be a veritable bedlam. But when I tell you 
that, according to the Federal Survey of our schools made in 
1919, not more than 3 per cent of the children entering school 
at the age of six or seven can speak the English language at all 
adequately, but use instead a pidgin English which is some- 
thing wonderful to understand and terrible to talk, then you 
will readily see what constant drill, drill, drill in English must 
be given in the schoolroom. Now the American white child 
does not need this drill and, on the other hand, is in danger of 
substituting pidgin English for his native tongue in its purity 
and power. What this pidgin English is can be illustrated by 
the following sentence: ‘‘ Please ’scuze no come school — 
mama planty pilikia, moemoe no can, kau-kau no can, hana- 
hana no can, wikiwiki she go make.” Which being inter- 
preted means: “‘ My mother is in great trouble, she can’t 
sleep or eat or work and she may die very soon!’ It’s tragic 
but it is not Shakespearean English, is it? 3 


Educational Standards 


Now the public schools, considering all their handicaps, are 
wonderfully efficient and are making steady progress under 


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Present Interracial and Educational Problems 79 


the enlightened leadership of Mr. Willard E. Givens, the 
present superintendent of public instruction. ‘‘ Hawaii has 
had a compulsory school law since the ’40’s, in this respect far 
antedating many of the states,” as Mr. Riley H. Allen points 
out in his admirable article on ‘‘ Education and Race Prob- 
lems in Hawaii” in the Review of Reviews for December, 1921. 
Mr. Allen also calls attention to the fact that “ Dr. Leonard 
P. Ayres in his authoritative study, ‘An Index Number for 
State School Systems,’ published by the Russell Sage Founda- 
tion, ranked Hawaii twenty-third in the list — Hawaii’s public 
school system being given as surpassing those of Illinois, 
Kansas, Wisconsin, New Hampshire, Virginia, Tennessee, 
Missouri, Vermont, and other states.” This report took 
consideration of such factors as number of children attending 
school, amount of training they secure, progress made, amount 
expended for buildings and supplies, salaries paid teachers and 
similar items, combining these factors into a single index num- 
ber which shows the general standing or efficiency of the sys- 
tem. This same report also declared that “ educational 
opportunities are more widely distributed throughout the 
entire area of the Territory of Hawaii than in any mainland 
state.” 


Not all White 


All this is the more noteworthy when you remember that 
these pupils are predominantly not of the white race. But, 
for that matter, the teachers are not all white either. The 
Federal School Survey has a very interesting chart showing 
the racial origin of the elementary school teachers as follows: 
Anglo Saxon, 40 per cent, Portuguese 12 per cent, Hawaiian 
9 per cent, Chinese 9 per cent, Japanese 5 per cent and mixed 
races, like Hawatian-Chinese or Hawaiian-American, 25 per 
cent. 


80 The Human Side of Hawan 


Private Schools 


The public-school system is supplemented by private schools 
which enroll 8470 children: This includes Punahou for white 
children; the Kamehameha Schools endowed especially for 
those with Hawaiian blood; missionary schools, like Mid- 
Pacific Institute, Iolani School, Maunaolu and Kohala Semi- 
naries and Hilo Boarding School, which seek to train Christian 
leaders for tomorrow among the Orientals and Hawaiians; 
and the Catholic parochial schools which enroll 2765 pupils 
of all races. 


Foreign Language Schools 


Another curious supplement to the public schools is the 
foreign language school system, maintained by the Orientals 
to teach their very difficult written languages to the rising 
generation. There are 155 such schools with 367 teachers 
and 20,352 pupils. Of these 241 are Korean; 1170 Chinese 
and 18,920 Japanese. These schools formerly required at- 
tendance before and after the public schools and were severely 
criticized as un-American in their influence, with the result 
that they have now been placed under the control of the 
department of public instruction. This question about 
language schools will be taken up later in the chapter on “‘ The 
Japanese Problem in Hawaii.” 


One Product of the Public Schools 


An unexpected and somewhat dramatic demonstration of 
the effectiveness of Hawaii’s public schools was made early in 
1923 by the announcement that the American Legion’s first 
prize of $750 for the best essay on ‘‘ How the American Legion 
Can Best Serve the Nation”? had been awarded to Ah Sing 
Ching of Ewa Plantation School. Ah Sing is an eighth grade 
boy, thirteen years old, a son of Cantonese parents, his father 
being a bookkeeper in a Chinese store at Waipahu. He won 
this first prize in a nation-wide contest against over 50,000 


Present Interracial and Educational Problems 81 


competitors, the second prize being awarded to Pauline Vir- 
ginia Chastain, a seventeen-year-old girl in Indianapolis. 


Would this Boy Make a Good Citizen ? 

One phrase in this essay is an epigram especially applicable 
to Hawaii: “‘ What we want in our nation, we must put in 
our schools!’ The essay which follows is first-hand evidence 
of what the schools are putting into the rising generation for, 
of course, what Ah Sing writes he learned first of all at school. 
Incidentally there is a gentle irony in remembering that this 
boy of Chinese parentage would be denied his birthright of 
American citizenship by certain anti-Oriental measures advo- 
cated somewhat widely on the Pacific Coast and even on the 
floor of recent conventions of the American Legion itself. 
Here is Ah Sing Ching’s brief essay in full. 


The American Legion Prize Essay 


“The American Legion, which is composed of men and 
women who enlisted for the defense of our country during the 
war, stands for unity, democracy, peace, and service to God 
and our country. 

‘The slogan of our country is, ‘In union there is strength,’ 
and it is because of this unity our country is so strong; but 
during the world war we found that we had internal as well 
as external enemies. Bolshevism, Communism and An- 
archy are as real enemies as any we had to fight overseas, and 
much harder to conquer. 

“The American Legion can do a wonderful service to the 
country by encouraging a spirit of unity and cooperation, and 
by teaching foreigners who come into the United States how 
to live under a Republican form of government, and by help- 
ing them to understand that ours is a government of the 
people, by the people and for the people, and it shall not perish 
from the earth. Many foreigners come from countries where 
they have been oppressed, and they do not understand the 


82 The Human Side of Hawan 


word liberty, but think it is a license to commit crimes. 
These people must be taught and the American Legion can 
aid in doing this. 

‘We learned at the beginning of the world war that many 
of our citizens were uneducated, and that not nearly enough 
money was being spent for schools. Here is a great work for 
the American Legion, to see that every child in the United 
States has a chance to be educated. What we want in our 
nation we must put in our schools, so that need for schools 
and well trained teachers is very great. Night schools for 
the training of men and women who work during the day help 
to educate our citizens, and those who wish to become citi- 
zens. ‘The American Legion is on the side of education and 
we beheve will make every effort to see that the schools of 
the United States rank first in the world and that every citi- 
zen has the opportunity for learning. 

‘“ During the world war many of our soldiers were wounded 
and returned home suffering from shell-shock, sick and unable 
to care for themselves. They fought in a great cause and 
deserve well of their country and their comrades. The Legion 
can give these returned veterans aid and comfort, and after 
they have sufficiently recovered, help them to become self- 
supporting. Many of them will be unable to follow the same 
occupation that they did before the war, but some kind of 
work can be found for them to do. The Legion should see 
that their comrades are always cared for. 

“The United States is not a military nation and believes 
in war for defense and not for conquest. At the close of the 
war our country asked for no land and no indemnity. Not 
many months ago President Harding called a conference of 
the nations to discuss a reduction of armies and armament. 
The American Legion can aid by fostering and encouraging 
peace and good will among nations and by standing for a 
fair deal between large and small nations, allowing the small 
nations to decide for themselves how they shall be governed. 


Present Interracial and Educational Problems 83 


‘“T hereby pledge my word of honor that I have written 
this essay myself. JI am thirteen years old.” 


(Signed) ‘‘ Ah Sing Ching, 
“ Grade 8, Ewa School. 
“ Hwa, Oahu, T. H. October 5, 1922.” 


Opposition to High Schools 


If this chapter seems too optimistic, it may be well to 
balance it with one ominous fact in the educational situation 
in Hawaii — the fact that there are people, educated people 
proud of their Americanism, who, while ready to allow simple 
elementary education, look with disfavor on free High Schools 
accessible to all the people. They feel that the High Schools 
add too great a burden of taxation, produce too many candi- 
dates for “‘ white-collar ”’ jobs and will result in social discon- 
tent. One cannot but sympathize with this as a criticism on 
the content and method of secondary education, but ts the 
denial of secondary education at all the right answer? 


Is a Helot Class Desirable ? 


If Hawaii is to be truly American it must continue to con- 
form to American educational standards. Sharply to limit 
secondary education is to enter on a policy of repression which 
can only result in a permanently hopeless helot class or an 
explosion. On the other hand, the High School, which on the 
mainland is often called ‘ the people’s college” and which is 
consequently dear to the people’s hearts, represents an open 
door of opportunity for the best qualified children of even the 
poorest parents to rise into the middle and_ professional 
classes. Is it not both un-American and dangerous to close 
this door? Although taxes for educational purposes may be 
higher than if free public High Schools were sharply limited, 
what about the future cost of ignorance, hopelessness, resent- 
ment and rebellion? 


84 The Human Side of Hawaii 


Agricultural Education Needed 


On the other hand, there can be no question that secondary 
education requires special study and adaptation to the agri- 
cultural life of Hawaii. All our schools should give more care 
to vocational training to gear them into the great industries 
of the Islands. This, in turn, will require some changes and 
adaptations on the part of these industries in order to use and 
hold the more intelligent type of labor which the schools can 
furnish. It is a hopeful fact that some plantation managers 
believe this can be done. 


CHAPTER IV 
INDUSTRIAL PROBLEMS 


The Social Test 


The vitality of the missionary teaching of a hundred years 
ago was demonstrated by its beneficial social results. It 
blossomed out into constitutional government, emancipation 
of the common people from the tyranny of the chiefs, univer- 
sal education and the permanent private ownership of home- 
steads. There is no question but that the acid test of Chris- 
tianity in Hawaii today and in the years that lie ahead will 
be the social test. The Christian leaders of today will not be 
judged by the eloquence of their preaching or fervor of their 
prayer-meetings so much as by their ability to secure the 
application of Christian principles to the conduct of industry. 


Welfare Activities 

Honolulu is a veritable hive of social workers. Settlements, 
Y. M. C. A., Y. W. C. A., missions, kindergartens, scouts, 
playgrounds, district nurses, clinics, leagues and institutions 
—all the machinery of social service abounds. Too much 
cannot be said in praise of the unflagging and devoted volun- 
teer service which, led by able and well-trained professional 
workers, carries on a ceaseless warfare against disease, pov- 
erty, ignorance, race prejudice and vice. In addition to the 
direct service which these social workers, both lay and profes- 
sional, render, they have an indirect value in educating the 
public conscience and keeping it constantly focused upon 
social and economic problems, 


86 The Human Side of Hawan 


High Infant Mortality 


The need for this wide-spread interest in social welfare work 
is clearly indicated by Hawaii’s surprisingly high infant mor- 
tality. The mainland infant mortality rate, in registration 
areas, for children under one year is 76 per thousand births. 
In Hawaii it was 120 in 1922°and, more startling still, it arose 
to 139.9 in 1928 according to official Board of Health figures. 
The Board of Health had these figures classified and segre- 
gated by districts and by races with the following very inter- 
esting result. 


Infant Mortality by Counties and Races 


Honolulhicityeonly) ivan) O71 Halipino sees a eee 366 
Oahu (outside the city). . 158 Hawaiian: oro eee 304 
HiloTytte Gs Bak? Stone 269 Asiatic-Hawalian. . . . . 135 
Hawaii (exclusive of Hilo). 155 Portucueset. cs =e 133 
Kalawao (Leper Settlement) -200 JAPANCSC: Le oe 3, See 120 
LCS 8 1 eae ee ied Bore 141 Caucasian-Hawalian . .. 96 
VS ULp tae oa ewe ea toe ae 75 Other Caucasian =e 55 
Mainland United States. . 76 Chinese: 2 sc ae ee 65 


A glance at these figures reveals that this is a rural prob- 
lem quite as much or even more than it is a city problem. In 
the country responsibility is divided between the plantations 
and the local authorities. The plantations can largely de- 
termine health conditions within their boundaries but they 
cannot always control conditions in towns, ike Waipahu or 
Wailuku, which are not on plantation property. Many of 
the plantations are already doing excellent welfare work and 
the hope for the country situation seems to lie in stimulating 
them to yet greater efforts. Led by the organized welfare 
work of the plantations, the local communities will eventually 
come up to higher standards. 


Causes of Infant Death Rate 
Social workers agree on the following causes of Hawaii’s 
abnormally high infant mortality: 
1. Lack of pre-natal care and instruction for mothers. 


Industrial Problems 87 


2. Lack of proper medical care for mother and child at birth 
and afterwards. Babies are generally delivered by 
ignorant, untrained midwives without doctor or nurse. 

3. Ignorance of mothers as to the proper care of children. 
Children play and sleep on damp and dirty floors and 
are improperly dressed. 

4. Improper feeding due both to absence of milk, poor 
quality of milk, use of condensed milk and largely to 
sheer ignorance of mothers as to proper food for babies. 

5. Venereal disease and other sickness on the part of parents. 


In other words poverty, ignorance, bad milk and inade- 
quate social and medical service are the causes of our humili- 
ating infant death rate. Children of the wealthy, educated, 
prosperous classes do as well in Hawaii as anywhere under the 
flag — probably better — it is the poor and ignorant who see 
their babies die at the rate of from 100 to 300 a thousand. 


How to Meet the Problem 


Without good pure milk no great reduction of infant mor- 
tality is possible. Hence the need of reenforcing the Board of 
Health’s corps of inspectors. Honolulu’s milk supply comes 
largely from small dairies using obsolete methods. Dairy- 
men must be taught to wash their cows, use clean hands, 
clothes and small top pails and sterile equipment. Outside 
the city some plantations are leading in this direction, but not 
all. Twenty modern dairy plants have been installed in the 
past four years making twenty-eight in all. Two other plan- 
tations supervise dairies they do not own while the remaining 
ten or twelve are supplied by outside parties. But the pres- 
ence of a dairy does not mean that all children in all camps 
have milk. A man high up in the plantation welfare work 
tells me that there are in reality ten plantations where there 
are sufficient visiting nurses and milk supply to insure the 
furnishing of milk to all children who need it. 


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Industrial Problems 89 


More Nurses and Socialized Medicine 


Pure milk is helpless to cope with the infant mortality prob- 
lem if the people are ignorant of how to care for it and use it. 
Filipinos now outnumber Japanese on the plantations and 
their terrific infant mortality rate is largely due to ignorance. 
All the plantations have hospitals with a staff of doctors and 
resident nurses but the next great need seems to be for more 
visiting nurses to educate ignorant mothers in the elements 
of baby hygiene. On Jan. 1, 1924, there were 21 plantations 
which reported 27 visiting nurses on full time and 11 more 
which employed a visiting nurse each on half time. This 
makes a total of 32) full time visiting nurses on 32 planta- 
tions leaving 10 plantations apparently without any visiting 
nurses at all. If the basic industries import ignorant laborers, 
they must either educate them in child hygiene or be prepared 
to contemplate an infant mortality rate utterly un-American 
and appalling to the Christian conscience. Next to the Fili- 
pinos, come the Hawaiians as victims of high infant mortality. 
Very few Hawaiuans live on the plantations, so this is a prob- 
lem for the general community. The greatly lowered infant 
death rate in Honolulu itself is probably due to the efficient 
work of Palama Settlement with its baby clinics, milk supply 
and district nurses. This work should be carried to all non- 
plantation communities. Nurses should also be supplemented 
by trained and licensed mid-wives. 


A Measure of Progress 


Some one should watch carefully year by year the trend of 
Hawau’s infant mortality, and bring it home unsparingly to 
the conscience of the community. It is a fairly accurate in- 
dex of social efficiency. Is there any insuperable reason why 
Hawaii might not attain to the standard of its neighbor to 
the south, New Zealand. which has an infant mortality of 
only 42 as over against Hawaii’s 139.9? 


90 The Human Side of Hawa 


Hawai s Economic Basis 

Hawaii is normally a prosperous community. Its total 
exports for 1921 were $131,000,000, of which sugar made up 
$94,000,000 and pineapples $30,000,000. The imports for 
1921 were about $90,000,000, leaving a favorable net trade 
balance of $41,000,000. Times were hard in Hawaii later on 
because of the low price of sugar and always will be hard 
whenever the wholesale price for raw sugar drops under 4 
cents a pound. 


The Sugar Industry 


Now the sugar industry has always been run on a wholesale 
basis — big corporations, big plantations, big sugar mills — a 
few white men directing the industry and a great mass of un- 
skilled labor, mostly Oriental and Portuguese, living in plan- 
tation “camps ”’ and doing the work. In days gone by labor 
was brought in under contract and there are persistent echoes 
of harsh treatment, inadequate and unsanitary housing, and 
cruel lunas or field bosses in those old unhappy days. Doubt- 
less then, as now, conditions varied greatly on different plan- 
tations; some managers were just and considerate, some 
harsh and arbitrary. And it should also be noted that con- 
tract labor was not so much a matter of choice as of necessity, 
for the home governments from which the laborers came in- 
sisted on a contract system before the emigration would be 
permitted. This was to guarantee their nationals continuous 
employment at definitely agreed upon wages. 


Plantation Welfare Work 


But, leaving the past to take care of itself, we can rejoice 
that today a very different spirit prevails. There are a few 
plantations, reported recently by the Japanese Consul-General, 
where the housing conditions are still very bad but, on the 
other hand, many plantations today are putting in operation 
a most commendable and enlightened program of welfare 


Industrial Problems 91 


work. They have excellent hospitals and constantly improy- 
ing housing and sanitation. Recreational centers are erowing 
up and trained welfare workers are on all the larger planta- 
tions. The wages that are paid, while small from a main- 
land standard, are reasonably adequate when one considers 
that they are supplemented by free houses, lights, fuel, water 
and medical attendance and that a profit-sharing system pro- 
vides a bonus proportioned to the price of sugar. It should 
also be noted that plantation labor is not seasonal but. is 
constantly employed all the year around. Neither weather 
nor the conditions within the industry itself ever compel the 
laborer to carry himself through a period of unemployment. 
This fact should be remembered before comparing wages paid 
in Hawaii with the higher rate per day commonly paid casual 
agricultural labor on the mainland. 


Criticism on Housing and Sanitation 

As an example of probably the most critical judgment pos- 
sible on plantation housing conditions the following extract is 
given from the report of Paul Scharrenburg who studied labor 
conditions in Hawaii during the summer of 1922 as personal 
representative of Samuel Gompers. In the American Federa- — 
tionist of September, 1922, he says: ‘‘ Aside from the usual 
board of health regulations, there is no law in the islands 
regulating sanitation and housing on sugar plantations. The 
Sugar Planters’ Association, through its welfare department, 
has in recent years furnished the various plantations with 
blue prints of model laborers’ cottages, bath houses and sani- 
tary toilets. But the number of plantation mangers who have 
taken the hint from the welfare department is comparatively 
small. The old whitewashed barrack type house in which 
the contract laborers were once herded is still in evidence, 
and fully 75 per cent of the toilets on all the camps visited 
were in disgraceful condition. <A still greater percentage of 
the plantation managers would be subject to arrest for failing 


MVH LNGIONV NI 10d DONIMVIN 





HTALS NVII 





Industrial Problems 93 


to observe minimum sanitary standards — that is, if the 
California law should apply to Hawaii. 

‘To be sure, there are honorable exceptions. And these 
exceptions prove what can be done to establish decent and 
homelike living conditions for the workers. The Hawaiian 
Commercial and Sugar Co., Frank Baldwin, manager, on the 
island of Maui, is perhaps the most noteworthy example in 
this respect. Nearly all the laborers’ cottages are surrounded 
by private gardens and there is an atmosphere of that clean- 
liness and neatness which together with a sort of community 
spirit goes such a long way to make things agreeable even for 
the lowest paid day laborer.” 


Rebuttal from Planters’ View-Point 

An interview with Mr. D. S. Bowman, head of the sugar 
planters’ welfare bureau with regard to Mr. Scharrenburg’s 
statements just quoted brings out, however, the following 
facts in rebuttal: Instead of being slow to follow the recom- 
mendations about better housing, the plantation managers 
have heartily accepted and followed these suggestions in all 
new building, according to Mr. Bowman. The bad condi- 
tions Mr. Scharrenburg complains of are practically all con- 
fined to a few plantations which are not able to pay expenses, 
but on the plantations which are financially successful welfare 
work goes forward in hearty sympathy with the recommen- 
dations of the bureau. Not only on Maui but all over the 
Islands on all paying plantations “ honorable exceptions ”’ 
could have been found. It is only on these few unsuccessful 
plantations that the sanitary conditions complained of would 
reach 75 per cent. As to the California law, it is very strin- 
gent and somewhat technical. Failure to conform to all its 
details does not necessarily mean bad sanitary conditions here. 
Hawaii must be judged by the best local standards, not by an 
arbitrary unknown standard from somewhere else. During 


94 The Human Side of Hawau 


1923 alone the plantations expended over $900,000 for new 
and improved housing for employees. 


Proposed Labor Importation 


And yet, in spite of all this welfare program, plantation 
work is not sufficiently attractive to hold or recruit its own 
labor supply and fresh importations have to be brought in — 
mostly from the Philippines, just now, though the planters 
have been recently seeking for a special dispensation of Con- 
gress whereby the Secretary of Labor may authorize the im- 
portation of Chinese for five-year periods to meet the present 
and any future shortage of labor. The sugar planters quite 
unitedly feel that this permission should be granted and that, 
if it is, it will greatly help the prosperity of the Islands and 
save the sugar industry from great losses through lack of 
sufficient labor to plant and harvest its crops. Because we 
are a part of the United States — a full-fledged Territory and 
not a mere “‘ possession ”’ or ‘‘ dependency,’’ — we are gov- 
erned by the same immigration laws as the mainland. But, 
because of our tropical climate and the nature of our industry, 
the planters argue, we need a rather different type of laborer 
from the mainland. In view of the present preponderance of 
Japanese the measure is urged as one that will even up the 
racial balance in population. What is even more to the point, 
the mere possibility of Chinese labor being brought in for 
emergency conditions will prevent the Japanese plantation 
laborers from organizing to control the labor supply and thus 
dictate to the plantations. There would always be a reser- 
voir of docile labor to be drawn upon in case of a strike. 


Arguments Against It 


It is only fair, however, to state some of the arguments made 
by the opponents of this proposal of Chinese short-term labor 
immigration. They object that, instead of helping Ameri- 
canize the Islands, it might be used to perpetuate just those 


Industrial Problems 95 


features of industrial life which are least American, — that 
is, the system of large plantations operated by foreign non- 
English-speaking laborers with a sub-American standard of 
living — while the children of Hawai, born here, educated in 
the public schools and Americanized in thought and ideals, 
will be driven by such competition either into an attitude of 
profound social discontent or into wholesale emigration to the 
mainland. The net result would be therefore to crowd out 
the very people who have been Americanized. Other minor 
arguments have to do with the evils of bringing in large num- 
bers of single men to live in barracks without normal family 
life and with the difficulty of controlling them and guarantee- 
ing their return to their native country. 


Two Ideas of Americanization 

Obviously, two quite different conceptions of what is meant 
by “ Americanization’”’ are in conflict here. One argument 
contemplates the acquirement of English speech and American 
ideals, loyalties and standards of life as Americanization, 
while the other means by it the continued control of all phases 
of life by the present white Americans and their descendants. 
One use of the term means the permeation of all races and 
classes by American standards and ideals, the other means 
first and foremost absolute control at the top by white 
Americans and then as much of American education and 
living conditions as will not imperil this complete white 
American control. The sharpness of this distinction is due 
primarily to fear of the Japanese — and the Japanese question 
will be dealt with as a special problem in the next chapter. 


Labor Commission Report 
During the winter of 1922-23 a Federal Commission ap- 
pointed by the Secretary of Labor visited Hawaii and reported 
on Jan. 25, 1923, that, due to importation of Filipinos, no labor 
shortage existed in the sugar and pineapple industries. But 


96 The Human Side of Hawau 


the Commission apparently did feel that the large preponder- 
ance of Japanese might prove dangerous to American control 
in case of a strike of a nationalistic rather than economic 
character. It therefore reeommended that ‘‘ In the event of 
and when an acute emergency of labor shortage shall arise, 
caused by other than bona-fide labor disputes, the Secretary 
of Labor shall submit for the consideration of the Congress 
of the United States the necessary evidence of such an emer- 
gency with a request that the President of the United States 
shall be empowered to authorize the temporary importation 
of any alien labor in such limited numbers as will bridge any 
such acute emergency, with the understanding that such alien 
labor will be returned to its home country as soon as the 
supply can be substituted by importation from the United 
States and its territories or at the discretion of the Secretary 
of Labor.”’ This possibly foreshadows the action of Congress 
in this matter and would seem to afford ample protection 
against Japanese labor getting a strangle hold on the planta- 
tions — were it inclined to do so — in the interest of Japanese 
domination. 


Forecast of Changes in Sugar Industry 


Because of facts like these, it would seem quite evident to a 
clear-headed and impartial observer that there will probably 
come, sooner or later, some very important and interesting 
changes in the organization of the sugar industry. One for- 
ward step will be the development of labor-saving machinery 
for cutting and loading cane; another will be yet more inten- 
sive cultivation, in smaller units, which will call for more 
trained leadership, more intelligence on the part of the laborers 
and consequent closer relationships between superintendents 
and men. This would unquestionably produce a_ better 
morale in the laborer. That such intensive cultivation will 
receive increasing emphasis is indicated by the remarkable 
increase in tonnage of cane per acre produced in scientific ex- 


Industrial Problems 97 


perimental projects carried on under direction of Mr. Hamil- 
ton Agee, the Planters’ Association expert. Another develop- 
ment may be a large extension of the ‘“ contract system ” 
whereby the worker cultivates cane on an area assigned to 
him and becomes not a day laborer but, in a limited way, his 
own boss. ‘‘ By common consent, cane-cutting and loading 
is rated as the most disagreeable work in the fields. Virtu- 
ally all of this is now done by contract. A given number of 
men: form a gang and arrange to do certain cutting or loading 
on contract. Obviously, this eliminates all dispute over the 
basic pay. The more work is done under the contract SVS- 
tem, the more money is earned, and according to all available 
information this arrangement is coming into general use on 
all plantations.” Out of this may grow at length definite 
lease or ownership of small areas of land, the plantation tend- 
ing more and more to become simply the scientific supervising 
body, operating the central mill where the cane is ground. 


Evolution, Not Revolution 

But, while progress must inevitably be made in the direc- 
tions just indicated, it is very important that any such eco- 
nomic transformation should not be forced or abrupt. It 
should be an evolution, not a revolution, for revolutions are 
always costly. If the plantations were forced into a hasty or 
premature reorganization it would only mean great financial 
loss which would set back all community progress most dis- 
astrously. It must always be remembered that it is out of 
the sugar industry, and because of the community spirit and 
social vision of many of its leaders, that there comes money 
and leadership which make possible Hawaii’s great program 
of educational, social and religious work. Economie disaster 
to the basic industry of the Islands would mean an educa- 
tional, social and religious back-set as well. Personally, I 
have absolute faith in the economic future of the Hawaiian 
Islands. But I also believe that the same indomitable scien- 


(Treney ‘enyIy) 4108 10}40q 94} JO 
HOVTITIA NOILVINVWId TVOICAL 





Industrial Problems 99 


tific spirit, which has perfected the finest sugar technique in 
the world, the best sugar machinery and the most productive 
manipulation of fertilizer, irrigation and varieties of cane, 
must now be turned upon the human factor, the problem of 
how to secure morale in labor. This scientific ability, com- 
bined with the high Christian character and missionary 
inheritance of many leaders in the sugar industry, gives us 
hope that there will be no failure but that the future will 
show an advance as marked and commendable as that of the 
past. 
A Model Plantation Village 

Waimanalo Plantation, just across the pali from Honolulu, 
is an interesting illustration of the trend toward better things 
in the dominant industry of the Islands. This plantation 
used to have a very bad reputation sociologically. Housing 
conditions were notoriously bad and labor unhappy. ‘This 
was partly because the lease was soon to expire and the plan- 
tation could not afford large investments in housing until it 
knew the lease would be renewed. Now the lease has been 
renewed and a splendid new $500,000 sugar mill has been 
built and, just beyond it, a model village. Well built cottages 
of four rooms each, window screens, running water, excellent 
sanitary and bathing facilities, attractive architecture and even 
hibiscus hedges, make this something very different from the 
filthy old camps which still remain to tell of the past. They 
will soon be torn down, however, and the labor will be housed 
in the new village — some workers are living there already. ° 
This village will have its social center, store and moving 
picture theater and public school. 


A Model Rural School 


This Waimanalo public school will be one of the most ad- 
mirable social achievements of Hawaii. It will have ample 
space — ten acres, if necessary, of fine sandy soil for play- 
grounds and gardens. It will be a new, clean, airy building on 


100 The Human Side of Hawai 


the outskirts of the village, within walking distance of the 
finest beach on Oahu. Already, in its present dreary build- 
ings, new spirit is being instilled into it because it is a teaching 
laboratory for the territorial Normal School. Seniors are no 
longer to prepare for rural school work by teaching in the city 
schools of Honolulu alone — relays of them will also teach at 
Waimanalo which soon will be a model rural school adjoining 
a model plantation village. 


A Constructive Labor Program 


Is not this the ultimate and truly American solution to the 
labor problem? Although for the present Hawaii may have 
to continue importing labor, the ultimate goal should be to 
grow its own. A plantation village attractive to live in, a 
rural school emphasizing vocational work and _ interesting 
children in the soil, an enlightened plantation policy seeking 
to build morale among the workers and enlist their enthusiasm 
and their children’s enthusiasm for Hawaii’s basic industry 
— here is a program of constructive vision and power. 


Other Industries 


Sugar is so predominant that, except for pineapple canning, 
the other industries of Hawaii are relatively small. Excellent 
coffee is raised in the Kona district of the Island of Hawaii 
and rice is raised in low fertile spots on all the Islands by 
Chinese who use primitive ancestral methods of agriculture. 
They employ picturesque water-buffaloes to plow their muddy 
fields. There is also a small banana industry, and some cattle 
raising on large upland ranches. Except for the latter, these 
industries are carried on by individuals on small pieces of land 
either leased or owned in fee simple. 


The Pineapple Industry 


A little over twenty years ago, in 1900, a young Harvard 
graduate interested in agriculture came to Hawaii. His name 


Industrial Problems 101 


was James D. Dole, son of a well known Unitarian minister 
near Boston. He had the vision to see the possibilities in 
canning pineapple and organized a modest little company 
capitalized at $20,000, with twelve acres of pineapple planta- 
tion. The first year’s output was 1893 cases. Today, this 
company, while still the largest, is surrounded by fifteen other 
companies and the total production for the Islands is six 
million cases, representing about 140,000,000 cans or more 
than one can for each inhabitant of the United States! The 
value of the pineapple export business is from $25,000,000 to 
$30,000,000 a year, and the area of pineapples under cultiva- 
tion is continually expanding. All of the pineapples are 
canned in a few large canneries owned by the pineapple com- 
panies and most of the fruit is raised by the companies them- 
selves, though there is an increasing number of individual 
farmers who raise ‘“ pines’ on owned or leased land and sell 
to the canneries. 


Pineapple Plantation Problems 

The chief problem is that, as Mr. Dole says, “ No matter 
when you plant a pineapple it will do its level best to get ripe 
on the 31st day of July!” The pineapple industry is there- 
fore a highly seasonal one as compared with sugar raising. It 
is interesting to note that the pineapple people have had very 
little labor trouble. This is due to a number of causes. For 
one thing, the laborers consider work on pineapple plantations 
more desirable because it is lighter, there being no heavy cane 
to be cut and loaded, and because pineapples are usually 
raised on the high and cooler uplands which are impossible for 
Sugar on account of lack of irrigation. Pineapples require 
no irrigation. Moreover the pineapple industry has a some- 
what more fortunate psychological approach to the laborer in 
that it has no inheritance of old and unpopular traditions in 
dealing with the workers. 


102 The Human Side of Hawan 


Model Canneries 


The two largest canneries in Honolulu are marvels of effi- 
ciency and cleanliness and of provision for the welfare of the 
employees. The Hawaiian Pineapple Company, the original 
company, for example, has the largest fruit cannery in the 
world with over 2,000 employees at the height of the season 
— the majority of them women and girls. Clean white aprons 
and caps are provided and also rubber gloves. Light and 
airy rest rooms and shower baths, an outdoor recreation 
ground of two acres, an emergency hospital, dispensary, and 
nurse, and a great clean, airy cafeteria where meals range 
from five cents to thirty-five cents, represent advanced ideas 
in welfare work. The five cent meal consists of a large plate 
of rice and wholesome meat stew and is served below cost. 
The Company invests $18,000 a year in the cafeteria over 
and above its receipts but considers the return in health, 
efficiency and morale well worth the cost. 


Employee Partners 


This Company encourages its employees to become partners 
by purchase of stock which is sold to them, on certain condi- 
tions, at a price well below the market rate. There are also 
rewards for inventive ideas and helpful suggestions and there 
is an old-age pension system. It is noteworthy that the pine- 
apple industry seems to have solved the problem of using the 
labor and securing the interest and cooperation of the second 
generation of Orientals. Its employees during the height of 
the packing season in the summer are many of them High 
School and University students, for the pineapple season and 
the vacation period coincide. Comfortable seats are pro- 
vided for the hundreds of women and girls employed and every 
effort is made to make the cannery sanitary, well lighted and 
well ventilated. Federal and Territorial laws do not admit 
the employment of children under the age of fourteen and 


Industrial Problems 103 


those between fourteen and sixteen may work only eight 
hours a day. For a short time at the peak of the season, 
older workers are employed ten and twelve hours a day but 
with over time of fifty per cent increase per hour. 


CHAPTER V 
THE JAPANESE PROBLEM-IN .HAWALE 


“What About the Japanese?” 


Sooner or later every one who becomes at all interested in 
our remarkable interracial experiment station in Hawati asks 
the question (sometimes in an ominous whisper), ‘‘ Yes, but 
what about the Japanese? ”’ 

Well, we have our Japanese problem in Hawaii. By the 
census of 1920 we had approximately 110,000 of the Japanese 
race out of our total population of 250,000. There are four 
Japanese daily papers in Honolulu and upwards of eighty 
Buddhist temples or Shinto shrines in the territory. The 
dominant labor group on our plantations until recently and 
nearly half of our 48,700 school children are of the Japanese 
race. It should be noted, however, that only about half of 
our racial Japanese are Japan-born. The other half are 
native-born American citizens and are being educated in our 
public schools. 


Contrast with Pacific Coast 


Naturally with so large an alien group there has been some 
friction, even:in a land with such favorable traditions of racial 
friendliness as Hawai. ‘That there has not been more fric- 
tion is due to the fact that the problem has been dealt with 
otherwise than it has been on the Pacific Coast; and, also, it 
must be stated in all fairness, because the social psychology 
of the Japanese and their position in the community is free 
from some elements which have been sources of irritation in 
California and elsewhere. It must always be remembered 
that here in Hawaii we have no white laboring class for the 
Japanese to antagonize by competition and that the Japanese, 


md 


The Japanese Problem in Hawaii 105 


moreover, never pushed themselves into Hawaii. They came 
by invitation — although, of course, they come no more since 
the ‘‘ Gentlemen’s Agreement.” 


Not Inscrutable! 


As a result of these conditions the Japanese have never felt 
that they were looked upon with hostility and the effect upon 
their psychology is marked. They are distinctly more ap- 
proachable and less inscrutable than on the mainland where 
their situation and, consequently, their psychology sometimes 
has an Ishmaelitish tendency. They are also less isolated. 
More and more, as school children, clerks and workingmen, 
they blend into the community, even though they seldom 
intermarry with other races. 


Little Intermarriage 


This tendency of the Japanese not to intermarry with other 
races arouses much comment from Americans who come to 
Hawaii for the first time. Those who know Japanese civili- 
zation, however, point out that this is due not only to a high 
degree of racial consciousness and pride but also to the Japa- 
nese marriage customs by which parents select the matri- 
monial partners for their children. This means that the con- 
trol of marriages remains for the present in the hands of the 
older, more conservative and least Americanized members of 
the race. Another generation and this control will have 
passed away. Then we may expect to see Japanese inter- 
marry much more freely with the other races with whom they 
have grown up since childhood. If there has been more inter- 
marriage on the part of the Chinese, that is because in the 
early days Chinese men came alone and, having no women of 
their own and being “‘ good providers,’ intermarried freely 
with the Hawauans. 


106 The Human Side of Hawau 


The *‘ Picture-Bride’’ System 

The “ picture-bride ” system, by which young women are 
brought from Japan to marry men whom they have never 
seen, though much criticized by many Americans, has this 
social value that it has made the Japanese home life as normal 
as possible by bringing in for Japanese laborers wives of their 
own race. Moreover, the picture-bride system, abnormal as 
it seems to Americans, is quite in harmony with Japanese 
customs, according to which the parents of the contracting 
parties and not the parties themselves arrange the marriage. 
There is a tendency, however, for a disproportionate number 
of picture-bride marriages to break up in divorce. This is 
due to the fact that such marriages have to meet the strain of 
a growing spirit of American independence unconsciously 
absorbed from life in Hawaii whereby young Japanese here 
are less and less inclined to accept with entire docility the 
judgment of their parental match-makers. One of the sad- 
dest evidences of this growing spirit of independence is to be 
found in the occasional reports in Honolulu newspapers of 
Japanese girls who have committed suicide rather than marry 
the choice of their parents. It is for this reason, rather than 
fear of picture-brides causing an undue increase of Japanese 
population, that many social and religious workers who are 
warm friends of the Japanese deplore the picture-bride sys- 
tem for obtaining wives for Hawaiian-born Japanese youth 
and urge its discontinuance. \ 


Labor Troubles 


The principal points of friction with the Japanese in Hawaii 
have been economic and educational. In the spring of 1920 
the Japanese Labor Federation staged a strike of plantation 
labor which greatly harmed the previous good-will toward the 
Japanese. The movement was cleverly organized. Only on 
one island did the laborers strike. On the others they kept 
working and out of their wages paid strike benefits to support 


The Japanese Problem in Hawaii 107 


the strikers. Thus the sugar planters were forced practically 
to finance the strike against themselves! The Japanese 
laborers had some real grievances, they did deserve a better 
basic wage, a bonus adjustment and improved living condi- 
tions. But they went about things in such a nationalistic 
fashion, even reporting non-strikers to their home-town 
officials in Japan, that it seemed as if American control of 
Hawaii depended on breaking the strike. 


Effects of Strike 1920 


The strike finally collapsed as a strike but was practically 
continued for some time in an underground way by a listless 
and indifferent attitude on the part of many laborers and a 
general exodus of others to Japan. This whole situation 
probably was due in part to the short-sighted policy of the 
Hawaiian Planters’ Association. The Planters were right in 
refusing to deal with the nationalistic Japanese Laborers’ 
Federation but were they not wrong in failing to provide, as a 
substitute, some adequate machinery for representation 
whereby their employees could deal with them through 
mutually recognized and accepted channels? Morale, there- 
fore, broke down in the sugar industry, as it must always 
break down where labor feels it is not consulted or given a 
fair opportunity for expression. But, in fairness to the 
Planters, the critically inclined should remember that there 
are peculiar difficulties in establishing an ‘ attractive labor 
policy’ when you are dealing with intensely nationalis- 
tic alien people behind whom is always the specter of their 
potentially aggressive and militaristic home government. 


Language School Problem 


The second place of friction with the Japanese has been the 
Japanese language schools. These schools, organized and 
supported by the Japanese themselves, though aided by the 
plantations, took the Japanese children before and after the 


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The Japanese Problem in Hawaii 109 


public school hours and taught them the Japanese language, 
history and other subjects. Many of these schools were under 
Buddhist control. In line with the general American awaken- 
ing about foreign language schools which resulted from the 
war, a movement developed here to abolish the language 
schools by legislative enactment. This problem, which at one 
time threatened to embitter our situation here beyond remedy, 
was helped a long way toward solution by an informal con- 
ference of the most broad-minded leaders of the community, 
both American and Japanese. The result was a law, suggested 
by the Japanese themselves, placing the language schools 
under control of the Board of Education, reducing the hours, 
and requiring all language school teachers to take courses and 
pass examinations in American history and ideals and the in- 
stitutions of democracy, and in the English language, though 
this last requirement was to be liberally construed for the 
first two years. 

The result has been satisfactory on the whole and has had 
a distinct Americanizing effect. The self-respect of the Japa- 
nese has been preserved and their educational leaders are 
being exposed to wholesome instruction in vital American 
principles. It should be noted that the leaders on both sides, 
both in proposing this plan and carrying it out, have been 
Christians — Christian Japanese, returned missionaries from 
Japan, Y. M. C. A. and Y. W. C. A. secretaries and descen- 
dants of old missionary families in Hawaii. 


Restrictions on Language Schools 


The Territorial Legislature of 1923 carried the control of 
language schools one step further by providing that no child 
should attend a language school until after the completion of 
the second grade in the public school and that all language 
schools should pay an annual license fee calculated on a basis 
of one dollar per pupil. The purpose of this legislation was 
not to persecute or hamper the teaching of Japanese and 


110 The Human Side of Hawan 


Chinese but to insure a better command of English in the 
rising generation by eliminating the competing interest of 
another language until the children had concentrated on 
English speech for two years. The purpose of the tax was 
simply to finance the proper supervision of the language schools 
and the good faith of this.was made evident at once by the 
appointment of a trained educator, a friend of the Japanese 
and foreign missionary in Japan, Dr. Henry Butler Swartz, 
as a full-time paid official of the department of public instruc- 
tion, charged with the examination and oversight of the 
language schools and their text-books and the editing of text- 
books for further use. Although this measure met with 
considerable opposition by certain elements among the Japa- 
nese and was challenged in the courts, it represents a control 
so reasonable and necessary that its acceptance has been 
generally urged by the more enlightened leaders among the 
Japanese, including the Consul-General himself. In spite of 
this more than half of the Japanese language schools have 
taken legal steps to test the constitutionality of the law. 
They were inspired to do so by U. 8. Supreme Court decisions 
holding unconstitutional the laws in certain states forbidding 
the teaching of German. The Hawaiian law, however, is not 
prohibitory but only regulative and supervisory. 


Diverse Japanese Opinions 


There are, of course, two parties among the Japanese — 
progressives who favor Americanization and reactionaries who 
dread and oppose it. Some Japanese, for example, are very 
tenacious about retaining the kindergarten grades as a part 
of their language schools while others recognize that the 
kindergarten work should be in English. The Nuanu kin- 
dergarten in Honolulu, built and financed in every way by 
Japanese, but administered on standard American kinder- 
garten lines by the Free Kindergarten Association, is a splen- 
did illustration of the earnestness and practical purpose of the 


The Japanese Problem in Hawai 38 Tal 


progressive Japanese. It is a striking fact that this English- 
speaking kindergarten for Japanese children, built and sup- 
ported by Japanese, is located in the very compound where 
the first Japanese language school was opened by the Rev. 
T. Okumura some thirty years ago. The two institutions 
side by side mark the direction of progress. 


Buddhist Influence 


The language school problem is complicated, then, by 
extremists on both sides. On the Japanese side there is doubt- 
less a subtle but indefinite and hidden influence on the part 
of the Buddhist organization. The Buddhist and Shinto 
priests and temples are natural centers of nationalistic senti- 
ment on the part especially of the older, non-English-speaking 
and un-Americanized Japanese. The language school often 
bears a relation to Buddhism in some ways analogous to the 
relationship of the parochial schools to the Catholic Church 
on the mainland. At all events since the Japanese language 
is the language of Buddhism and English is the language of 
Christianity, it would be only natural that conservative 
Buddhist influence should deplore any weakening of the 
Language School system. At the same time this influence, 
in the nature of things, is never expressed openly and remains 
subtle, hidden, imponderable. 


Hasty Coercion Undesirable 


But there are also extremists on the American side and, 
while they may work secretly, they are also at times embar- 
rassingly vocal and insistent. These are the people who talk 
shallowly about ‘‘ one hundred per cent Americanism,” ‘‘ one 
people, one language,”’ and who would wipe out all the Japa- 
nese language schools with one grand gesture of annihilation. 
These people fail to recognize that some things cannot be 
unduly hurried but that time is of the very essence of the 


process. They mistake an external unity of language for an 


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The Japanese Problem in Hawan ies: 


inner unity of spirit, forgetting that Great Britain and Ireland 
had one language but two peoples, while Switzerland has three 
languages but one people. Unity of language would be a 
poor thing at the cost of permanent estrangement and bitter- 
ness of spirit. They also fail to recognize the deeper prob- 
lems of freedom involved. If they were living in Japan would 
they welcome, toward schools they might establish to teach 
English, such action by the Japanese government as they 
urge by ours? Moreover it is highly desirable that the Japa- 
nese language should be well taught in Hawaii, both now and 
for years to come, in order that family and commercial rela- 
tions may be maintained. The great difficulty of written 
Japanese is that it is not phonetic but is largely expressed by 
arbitrary characters which convey ideas rather than sounds. 
Consequently a knowledge of spoken Japanese affords very 
little clue to written Japanese. Hawaiian-born children in 
Japanese homes may pick up the spoken language from their 
parents, but to speak correctly and especially to know and 
use the written language they need careful and thorough 
instruction either in special schools or by competent teachers 
in the public schools. 


Expand the Public Schools 


The solution of the language school problem calls for great 
patience, tact and sympathy. As fast as possible the public 
schools must be enlarged by the addition of kindergartens, 
organized play, manual training and the teaching of Japanese. 
As fast as this is done the language schools will decrease while 
the public schools will increase. 


The Teacher’s Influence 


A year or two ago a local Japanese physician, who is a 
eraduate of the Boys’ High School and Cooper Medical Col- 
lege in San Francisco, picked up a little Japanese schoolboy 
for a ride in his automobile. ‘‘ Which do you like best — 


114 The Human Side of Hawau 


the American or Japanese schools? ” the doctor queried. With 
true Oriental diplomacy the boy shyly admitted that he liked 
them both but finally, on further acquaintance, expressed a 
preference for the American public school. “ But why?” 
said the good doctor. ‘‘ Oh,” said the boy, ‘in the Japanese 
school we have a man teacher and he is very cross but in the 
American school we have a kind lady teacher and we love 
her!’”’ And my friend, the Japanese doctor, said, as he told 
me the story, ‘‘ I wonder if you Americans realize the wonder- 
ful way in which your women teachers command the love of 
our Japanese children? ”’ 


No Merely Negative Attitude 


Here is light on the Japanese language school problem. No 
merely negative attitude toward the language schools will 
solve the psychological problem involved in bringing the 
Hawaiian-born child of Japanese parents to full and complete 
Americanization. Indeed, a ruthlessly negative attitude 
might block the process by seeming to make martyrs of the 
language schools and thereby endearing them to those who 
otherwise would have become terribly bored by them in a 
few years. Whatever steps in control of the language schools 
may prove wise, tactful and just, the most fruitful approach 
to the problem will continue to be positive, not negative — 
substitution more than repression. Informed opinion believes 
that the language schools are inevitably destined to die out. 
Meanwhile we must create more than we take away. We 
must win because our schools and kindergartens in themselves 
win the love and loyalty of the children of all the different 
racial ancestries in Hawaii. 


The Japanese Newspapers 
It was inevitable that, following the schools, the language 
press should come up for consideration. Here again more 
considerate counsels prevailed and, instead of abolishing the 


The Japanese Problem in Hawai BHO 


language press, a strong law penalizing papers for publishing 
material inciting to disloyalty, violence or race antagonism 
was passed. It is worthy of note that the Nippu Jiji, the 
leading Japanese daily, publishes one page entirely in English. 


Dual Citizenship 

Another potential source of friction is the anomalous and 
uncomfortable fact of dual citizenship. Federal laws do not 
permit the naturalization of Japanese but their children born 
in Hawaii are American citizens by virtue of the Fourteenth 
Amendment to the Constitution. This Amendment, adopted 
primarily to protect the negro in his citizenship rights, de- 
clares that “all persons born or naturalized in the United 
States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of 
the United States and of the States wherein they reside.” 
But these young people are also subject to the jurisdiction of 
Japan, for, in most cases, they have been registered at birth 
at the Japanese Consulate. This is the custom of practically 
all nations —even Americans living abroad register their 
children at the American Consulate. Japanese parents here 
in Hawaii ten or twenty years ago, largely ignorant of America 
and counting themselves Japanese, naturally registered their 
children at their country’s consulate, and continue to do so. 
But this makes the child, if a boy, Hable for military duty 
according to the Japanese universal military service laws. 
And, unless before he arrives at the age of seventeen he files 
proper documents at the consulate making request for annul- 
ment of his Japanese citizenship, he is in due course of time 
given notice to appear for service in the Japanese army. If 
he disregards this summons, as practically all do, the Japa- 
nese government takes no further action unless he visits Japan, 
when, if he stays beyond a certain period, three months I 
understand, he is liable to be seized for military duty. But 
all this time he is a full-fledged native-born American citizen 
with all the rights and privileges appertaining thereto! 


116 The Human Side of Hawai 


International Agreement Needed 


It is perfectly clear that this is not a problem which can be 
settled locally. It should be settled as soon as possible by 
diplomatic conference between the American and Japanese 
governments. It is an anomalous situation which grows out 
of the unusual generosity of our American Constitution in 
granting citizenship automatically to all American-born chil- 
dren regardless of parentage and it should be noted that the 
Japanese government is not the only government with which 
it produces complications. Several European nations with 
compulsory military service take the same attitude as Japan 
to children born abroad. 


Local Complications 


How great is the need for prompt diplomatic settlement of 
this problem will be seen by the fact that Hawaii had in 1922 
over nine hundred registered voters and potential officials or 
public school teachers who, through no fault of their own, 
were in the uncomfortable situation of being claimed as citi- 
zens by two countries. Of course all Hawaiian-born Japa- 
nese entering Normal School and High School sign a state- 
ment renouncing their Japanese citizenship, which is good as 
far as it goes, but does not affect their status under Japanese 
law. It is also interesting to know that the vital statistics 
for 1922 show that more births of Japanese parentage are 
reported by the Board of Health than by the Japanese Consu- 
late. This indicates a very wholesome tendency on the part 
of at least some Japanese parents to cut loose entirely from 
Japan and renounce for their children any claim to Japanese 
citizenship. 

A Graduating Class 


Meanwhile, in spite of all difficulties, the process of making 
good American citizens of the Hawailan-born Japanese boys 
and girls goes steadily forward through public schools and 
churches, boy scouts, girl scouts, Y. M. C. A. and Y. W. ©: A; 


The Japanese Problem in Hawaii ew 


and the welfare work on the plantations. For example, a 
recent graduating class of McKinley High School numbered 
ninety-one. Of these, thirty-six were Japanese, thirty-five 
Chinese and the remaining twenty were Korean, part-Ha- 
walian and Caucasian. Of the fifteen “ honor graduates,” 
eight were Japanese, four Chinese, three Caucasian and one 
Scotch-Hawaian. A medal was presented that evening which 
had been competed for at a public-speaking contest some 
weeks before. It is significant that it was presented to 
Ernest Fujinaga, a Japanese boy. But it is still more signifi- 
cant that his subject had been ‘‘ My Ideal of Character ”’ and 
that his address was a tribute to Jesus as the supreme ideal 
of character. Here it is: 


A Japanese Boy’s Speech 


‘“ Character, it seems to me, is the most important factor 
of an individual. It is what he is; not what others know 
about him. However, it seeks outward expression through 
the mediums of his actions, manner, and speech, so that 
others, to a very great extent, can judge his character in 
terms of what he says and what he does. Let me depict to 
you my ideal character. 

“T lke to think of a simple person — simple in manner, 
simple in speech, simple in dress. In such a person I find 
honesty, kindness, sympathy, willingness, happiness. His 
honesty 1s not a painted one, but it is a true expression of his 
inward self. His kindness and sympathy, too, are real and 
true. He is kind to his inferiors, as well as to his equals and 
superiors. Even to the lower forms of animals he is kind and 
sympathizes with them in the time of their distress. He is 
willing to help. He helps others cheerfully and joyfully. His 
happiness is real and permanent. By being happy and con- 
tent himself he makes others happy and content. 

“T esteem highly a religious character. By a religious 
character I do not mean that he goes to church every Sun- 


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The Japanese Problem in Hawaii IRS, 


day, knows all that there is to be known of the Bible, and ob- 
serves all the religious formalities; but I mean that he prac- 
tises his religion in what he says and what he does, that he is 
filled with the spirit of Love, that his life is one of service as 
that of the humble carpenter of Nazareth was. Before such a 
person wealth, honor and pleasure all disappear, and he is 
reduced to a simple and humble being, ready to do service to 
others. 

‘ He who is my ideal character must possess high ideals — 
always striving upward, always attempting to attain a new 
and higher level in life. This, indeed, completes my ideal of 
character — a simple, religious person with high ideals. 

“ Christ of Calvary was such a character. Pilate saw no 
fault in him. The world sees no flaw in his personality. I, 
insignificant as I am, can detect no spot in his character. 
Into the family circle he brings joy, satisfaction, happiness, 
love. Into community life he brings the spirit of philan- 
thropy. He is the ideal of the nation. Before him class dis- 
tinctions all vanish away, and he becomes the ideal of the 
world. Is not he your ideal character? He who leads the 
army of the world, not with sword, but with Love; he whose 
personality and character have survived two thousand years; 
he who was simple, religious and with high ideals, unblemished 
and spotless, is my ideal character.” 


The Gulf Between the Generations 


During my seven years’ residence in Hawaii I have come to 
feel a great aloha for the Japanese. They are clean, courteous, 
thrifty, law-abiding, intellectual, eager to learn and very 
appreciative of kindness and honorable treatment. I have 
no question that the young Japanese born in Hawaii and 
educated in our public schools are growing up loyal to the 
best ideals of America. The Japan-born Japanese recognize 
very clearly that these children of theirs are in some mys- 
terious way different and there is a deep gulf between the 


R. J. Baker FE 


A JAPANESE GIRL INJHAWAII 


Showing the influence of American environment 





The Japanese Problem in Hawaii WAL 


Hawaiian-born and the Japan-born Japanese. Two Hawaiian- 
born Japanese girls recently drowned themselves in the sea 
rather than marry Japanese-born husbands selected for them 
by their parents. | 


A Japanese Girl’s Essay 


“Japs don’t know how to treat a wife anyway,” said a 
Hawanan-born Japanese girl recently after getting a divorce. 
To her a husband born in Japan awas a “ Jap.” 

A more cheerful evidence of the influence of American 
ideals is to be found in the following essay written in 1922 by 
Asayo Kuraya, a junior in the Hilo High School. It took 
first prize in a territory-wide contest open to students of all 
races and sponsored by the Daughters of the American Revo- 
lution. All essays had to deal with how to be a good Ameri- 
can citizen. 

‘To realize the ideal of our country I must be honest, 
brave, industrious, intelligent and democratic and constantly 
strive to promote the spirit of good will among all classes of 
people. I must place my country as to love and admiration 
above all others and be ever ready to contribute my all for 
the integrity of my country, for its glory and prosperity are 
mine. 

‘T must sympathize with others and respect their ideals 
and love for their own countries, thus helping to bring about 
better understandings and to strengthen the ties of friendship 
with other nations. 

“To be of better service to my country and the people I 
must study the machinery of our government. I must read 
newspapers and the leading periodicals to acquaint myself 
with the current events so that I may be ever ready to do my 
share to accomplish my country’s undertakings. 

“| must be proud of my citizenship and always remember 
that I am not a subject, but sovereign in my rights; that this 
is a government of the people, by the people, for the people.” 


129 The Human Side of Hawaii 


Different Shades of Emphasis 
Of course it is inevitable that, in a situation involving so 
many variable factors as the Japanese problem of Hawaii, a 
little different shading and emphasis will change the picture. 
Much depends on the economic, social, temperamental, racial 
and religious background of.the writer in interpreting so com- 
plex a social situation. Perfectly honest observers will re- 
port with especial emphasis the things which have come into 

the focus of their prejudices or predispositions. 


Statement by Cornelius Vanderbilt, Jr. 


But, with the utmost recognition of honest differences of 
interpretation it is hard to be patient with such a false and 
prejudiced statement as that which appeared under the name 
of Cornelius Vanderbilt, Jr. in the San Francisco Hxaminer 
of November 26, 1922. The following extracts from this 
sensational article illustrate a type of dangerous misrepresen- 
tation against which the American people should be on their 
guard. ‘‘ Hawaii is lost to the United States! Hawai can 
never be a state now. It may soon cease to be even a terri- 
torial possession of the United States. Hawaii is already, 
barring only Formosa, the greatest insular colonial outpost of 
the Imperial Japanese Government. Its affairs are indirectly 
controlled now by the Japanese Colonial Office. The day 
when it will be controlled by the Colonial Office directly, not 
to mention the War Office, is not distant in the expressed 
opinions of Japanese authorities themselves. 

‘Americans! Do you know that: — 

“There are more Japanese in Hawaii than there are either 
whites or Hawaiian natives? 

‘“ Japanese can become citizens of the United States in 
Hawaii and then migrate to the States? 

“By 1933 the Japanese electoral body in the Hawaiian 
Islands will decide at the polls whether there shall be a Re- 
publican or a Democratic form of government in the Islands? 


The Japanese Problem in Hawaii AS: 


“Twenty per cent of the entire population consists of 
Japanese citizens of the United States? 


“The Japanese fully expect to gain absolute political 
control through their voting privileges. For the present they 
are content to control the Islands economically. . . . 

‘Tied by the immigration laws, the hands of government 
are unable to check the mad rush of alien unassimilable blood 
to the Hawaiian Islands and its incorporation into the body 
politic. The only thing the United States Government can 
do, and is now doing in a quiet but forceful way, is to con- 
tinue the dispatch of armed troops to Schofield Barracks, 
Honolulu, the great military outpost of the United States in 
the Pacific. 


‘Where the ‘ Gentleman’s Agreement ’ between the United 
States and Japan failed to work on the American continent — 
failed utterly to check the inflow of Orientals into the United 
States — the ‘ Gentleman’s Agreement’ does not operate in 
Hawaii. 

“In consequence Japan is at liberty to send into that 
island territory as many of her people as she will give pass- 
ports to. 


‘“ Hawai is under the American flag but it has been prac- 
tically conquered by the Japanese. It is to all intents and 
purposes administered as much by the Imperial Japanese 
Government as it is by the Federal Government.” 


The Plain Facts in the Case 


Now, over against the emotional and misleading statement 
just quoted, what are the facts? Just these: Hawaii is a 
self-governing territory of the United States with its own 
legislature, and complete governmental machinery. No 


124 The Human Side of Hawau 


other section of the United States exceeds it in loyalty and 
patriotism. Japanese cannot become citizens of the United 
States in Hawaii any more than they can anywhere on the 
mainland. The Supreme Court decision in the famous 
Ozawa Case, handed down in November, 1922, held that 
Japanese are not capable .of naturalization because of the 
~ Federal statute limiting that privilege to ‘“‘ free white persons 
and to aliens of African nativity and to persons of African 
descent.” 
The ‘‘ Gentleman’s Agreement ”’ 

As to the ‘‘ Gentleman’s Agreement” it is operating in 
Hawaii precisely as it does on the mainland. There is a 
rumor that it contains a clause by which, in event of a labor 
shortage, the Japanese Government is authorized to issue 
passports to laborers to Hawaii but not to the mainland. If 
such a clause exists, it was probably inserted at the behest of 
American capitalists, not of the Japanese; but the simple 
facts are that no passports to laborers have been issued since 
the ‘‘ Gentleman’s Agreement ” went into effect. No one in 
Hawaii questions but that the Japanese Government has 
honestly kept that agreement as far as Hawaii is concerned. 
There has been no “‘ mad rush of unassimilable blood ”’ here. 


Japanese Economic Domination 


As to economic domination, the simple fact is that the great 
wealth-producing industries of the Islands, sugar and pine- 
apples, are organized and controlled financially by Americans. 
They employ Japanese and, increasingly, Filipino labor, 
although Chinese, Portuguese, Koreans and other nationalities 
are also employed in considerable numbers. In the small 
retail trades, the Chinese and Japanese find their largest field 
of operations and the Japanese do most of the lighter type of 
building. The large buildings, however, are usually erected 
by citizen labor — of Hawatian, Portuguese and various other 
racial origins. Household servants are largely Japanese. 


The Japanese Problem in Hawaii ILS 


The large number of Japanese shops, restaurants, and other 
enterprises is quite natural in view of their proportion of the 
total population, and not relatively so large as that of the 
Chinese who also are efficient in industry. Some of the larg- 
est grocery stores, dry-goods stores, markets and planing 
mills are Chinese. The one industry which the Japanese 
seem to control most completely is fishing, and even here the 
retail end is all in the hands of Chinese. 


In Case of War! 

Of course any one can see at once that, in the event of war 
with Japan, Hawaii would face a peculiarly difficult situation 
with about twenty per cent of the population Japanese-born 
and another twenty per cent of Japanese parentage. Just imag- 
ine what would happen in New York if the United States got 
into war with the Irish Free State! But the Washington Con- 
ference on Limitation of Armaments, which has gone so far 
to clear up the problems of the Pacific, and the evidently 
declining prestige of the military party in Japan both give 
hope that peace and not the madness of war will prevail. If 
now the sensational press and everybody else concerned will 
cease this foolish and disturbing war-talk so that our young 
Hawaiian-born Japanese may not be made continually and 
uncomfortably self-conscious; and if Washington and Tokyo 
will keep the peace in mutual respect and good will — why 
then in the years that lie ahead we can promise you here in 
Hawai young American citizens of Japanese ancestry equal to 
those of any other foreign stock in intelligence, thrift, civic 
pride, respect for law and loyalty to American institutions and 
ideals. In the meantime it should be remembered that no 
one ever questions the complete loyalty of the Portuguese or 
of the brown-skinned young people of the Hawaiian, Chinese, 
Korean and Filipino races. When one talks about ‘ only 
15,523 American-born citizens in the Islands” he forgets the 
41,000 Hawaiians, 36,000 Filipinos, 26,000 Portuguese, 23,000 


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The Japanese Problem in Hawau 127 


Chinese, 6,000 Porto Ricans and 5,000 Koreans — upwards 
of 140,000 people who, no matter what course the Japanese 
took, could be depended upon as beyond question loyal to 
the United States. 


Will the Japanese Ultimately Control ? 


Visitors from the mainland, however, are apt to feel that, 
with the large numbers of Japanese everywhere in evidence in 
Hawaii, they will ultimately be absolutely in control. It is 
generally assumed, by superficial observers at least, that the 
Japanese have an overwhelming birth-rate, and that they will, 
therefore, sooner or later crowd all other races out and then, 
by their voting strength, capture the Islands for Japan. 
Before this would be permitted Congress would, of course, 
repeal the present “ Organic Act’? by which Hawaii has the 
status of an autonomous self-governing territory and candi- 
date for statehood, and could reduce the Islands to the rank 
of an ‘‘ insular possession ”’ governed by a commission from 
Washington backed by military power. 


Professor Adams’ Studies 


But is it probable that such a necessity will arise? Are the 
Islands likely to become “‘ japanized’’? A very interesting 
side-light is thrown on this question by some recent studies by 
Prof. Romanzo Adams who holds the chair of economics in 
the University of Hawaii and who has been making a scientific 
sociological study of the Japanese situation. These studies, 
as published in the Honolulu Star-Bulletin during August and 
September, 1922, and in Foreign Affairs for December, 1923, 
show that instead of having the highest birth-rate in Hawaii 
the Japanese birth-rate is lower than any other race’s except 
the whites and the Hawaiians. Birth-rate figures are no- 
toriously misleading unless based on the number of women 
of child-bearing age in a given area. On the mainland the 
number of births per 1000 women between the ages of 18 and 


128 The Human Side of Hawau 


44 is about 100 among native born and 175 among foreign 
born. Here in Hawaii on the same basis, the birth-rate for 
the different races, as figured by Professor Adams, is: American 
and North European 97; Hawaiian and Part-Hawalian 236; 
Japanese 238; Portuguese 240; Chinese 257; Filipino 267; 
Spanish 316; Korean 326; Porto Rican 351. Concerning 
these very interesting figures, Professor Adams says: ‘‘ The 
Hawaiian race is not a dying race but an amalgamating race, 
and in the distant years to coms: the blood of the old Hawaiians 
will flow through the veins of great numbers of people and in 
important quantities.’”’ ‘‘ The fact that the Japanese have a 
lower rate than the Portuguese and Chinese who have lived 
here longer, is due to the more advanced industrial and edu- 
cational development of their native country. The forces 
that reduce fecundity are already operative in Japan.’’? Pro- 
fessor Adams predicts that “the birth-rate of the Japanese 
will be reduced rapidly until it approximates the average rate 
in the United States ” as the Japanese take on more and more 
American ideas and standards of living. He also notes that 
the birth-rate of all races except the American and North 
European in Hawaii is high, the net gain over deaths in 1920 
being 5601 or 2.2 per cent — “‘ about double the rate of gain 
in Japan.” 


Japanese Rate of Increase 


But even though their birth-rate is not so high as some 
other races, will not the Japanese dominate because of their 
large head-start in numbers? During the decade from 1910- 
20 the census shows that Japanese increased 29,599 or 37.1 
per cent while all other races increased 34,404 or 30.6 per cent. 
If this rate continues the Japanese will be 501% per cent of the 
total population in 1975. But, as a student of sociology, 
Professor Adams believes this rate will not continue because 
of these factors: (1) An increase of death-rate will begin in 
ten or twenty years when our present Japanese population 


The Japanese Problem mn Hawaun 129 


now largely between 30 and 55 years old (men) or 20 and 44 
years old (women) approaches old age. (2) Considerable emi- 
eration to the mainland is bound to take place among the 
better educated Hawaiian-born Japanese who will find too 
limited opportunities in the Island industries and who, as 
native-born American citizens, are free to live anywhere in 
the United States they choose. (38) This process will be 
further accelerated by the competition of other races with 
lower standards of living like the Filipinos and Chinese coolies, 
if permission should be obtained to bring these latter in as 
plantation laborers. Professor Adams’ findings on this point 
are startlingly at variance, therefore, with the popular im- 
pressions. He says: ‘‘ The Japanese will continue to increase 
in numbers but at a diminishing rate. They will be a dimin- 
ishing factor in Hawaii. They constituted 42 per cent of 
the population in 1920. By 1930 they will be less than 40 
per cent and then their percentage will fall rapidly until they 
constitute not more than 25 or 30 per cent of the total popu- 
lation.” 
The Japanese in Politics 

A similar statistical study based on the United States Cen- 
sus figures and other local data, making allowance for death 
and immigration, indicates that ‘‘the vote of citizens of 
Japanese ancestry will constitute about 29 per cent of the 
total vote by 1940, if the Filipinos and their successors are 
left out of account. Including such voters the Japanese per- 
centage may be much smaller than 29 per cent. At no time 
will it approach 50 per cent and there is no prospect of their 
dominating the territory politically.” 


Will Japanese Form a Block? 


Of course it is important to remember that even a minority 
eroup may dictate if it holds the balance of power by forming 
a solid block in a divided community. Great interest, there- 
fore, attaches to the tendencies of the Hawaiian-born Japanese 


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The Japanese Problem in Hawau iis 


to divide along other than racial lines. It is significant in this 
connection to note the cleavages in the Japanese community 
already mentioned in this chapter. As time goes on the bond 
of language will weaken, for the coming generations will use 
English with greater ease than Japanese, in spite of the 
language schools. The tendency also is for economic differ- 
ences to arise and create common economic interests with 
similar groups in the general population. Statistics show 
clearly that the unskilled laborers are decreasing among the 
Japanese racial group while skilled workers and independent 
operators are increasing in all lines. An increase in the 
property on which Japanese paid taxes from $4,502,536 (2.18 
per cent of the total) in 1916 to $9,419,773 (3.29 per cent of 
the total) in 1921 indicates an economic prosperity which will 
inevitably bring a deeper interest in general problems of 
community well-being. 


Importance of Fair Treatment Now 


Probably the decisive influence in either solidifying the 
Japanese into a racial block or distributing them among the 
normal parties and group-interests of the community will be 
the treatment they receive from the other races. If now in 
the day of their voting weakness they are treated with fair 
play and manifest good will and if, as increasing numbers of 
them qualify as voters, they are received with characteristic 
Hawaiian hospitality into the political life of the community, 
encouraged to vote and run for office, appealed to as human 
beings and good citizens, the chances are decidedly in favor 
of their blending in to our total citizenship. H a contrary 
spirit prevails among those of us who are already voters, we 
shall have only ourselves to blame for a solid Japanese block. 
The exigencies of practical politics will probably continue to 
break across race lines in the future as they have in the past. 
After all a vote is colorless and raceless — which basic fact 
all good politicians can be trusted to remember! 


132 The Human Side of Hawaii 


The Problem is Ours! 


‘Our problem, then,” to quote Professor Adams in conclu- 
sion, “is in large measure the problem of ourselves. We 
Americans — what will we do? My own firm belief is that, 
whatever the temporary manifestations may be, the perma- 
nent temper of America is favorable to a broad generous 
policy. America — the real America — is not given to exces- 
sive suspicion, fear and distrust. America is just. America 
is and can afford to be generous. America is confident and, 
if certain unfortunate mental attitudes induced by war cause 
us to move toward a policy originating in fear and suspicion, 
it will not be permanent. It will be abandoned when we 
return to habits of thought and action that have characterized 
the American people throughout nearly all our national 
history.” 


CHAPTER VI 
HOW. TO HELP. HAWAII 


Hawaii's Wide Influence 


It is to be hoped that every thoughtful American who reads 
this book will feel a hearty impulse to help Hawaii in meeting 
and solving the problems herein presented. Hawaii. is 
America’s interracial laboratory and our success or fajlure is 
vital both for America herself and for America’s contribution 
to the larger problems of the Pacific. Not long ago one of 
our prominent citizens, returning from Red Cross service 
abroad, was invited to address the young men’s club of the 
Second Chinese Congregational Church of Honolulu. “ Where 
are the fellows I used to talk to here four years ago? ”’ he 
asked. The answer was that half of them were back in China 
— two in government service, one editing a newspaper and 
the others in commercial positions! 


Permanent Congress of Nations 


Hawaii is a sort of permanent congress of the nations bor- 
dering on the Pacific and it is always in session. If Christi- 
anity fails here, not only in numbers but in its essential spirit 
as a creator of peace, interracial good will and industrial 
justice and humanity, it will fail most grievously, for the news 
of its failure will resound throughout the Pacifie world. But 
if Christianity succeeds in Hawaii, then it will be easier for 
it to succeed everywhere else in the Pacific area. 


Still a Strategic Mission Field 
One way, therefore, to help Hawaii is to remember its 
peculiar strategic significance as a mission field even today. 
This does not mean that more denominations ought to rush 


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How to Help Hawaii 135 


in and multiply machinery. The area is small and we have 
too many denominations already. But it does mean that 
those branches of the Christian church already at work have 
a tremendous responsibility to push their work at a maxi- 
mum of efficiency and in the utmost possible cooperation with 
one another. 
Religious Forces 

The present situation of Hawaii as a mission field is, in 

outline, as follows: 


Total population . . ee Boyt eee aes 284,000 
Of these half are entirely non-Christian or ae ' 142,000 
The half under some Christian influence includes Catholic 
(population) . . . ht Se oe oe 68,000 
Hawaiian Board of Missions (members) Le 11,000 


(Congregational in government, and largely Congregational 
and Presbyterian in origin) 


NOMMOMS em Dele) e ake eocctens ih. sah oh 08 knee -11,140 
We hu Omistaw mcm STS) wig feet eh nek fe Oe os 2009 
Episcopalians (members) . . Std ee ee 2200 
Minor denominations (members), (est. if eae 1,000 


(Includes Seventh Day Adventists, Christian Scientists and Re- 
organized Mormons) 
Population affiliated with above but not members . . . 46,000 


Looking at these figures somewhat more in detail, the differ- 
ent Christian bodies report the following racial elements. 
(It should be noted that the Catholic figures are for popula- 
tion whereas the other figures include members only. They 
would be possibly three times as large if based on population. 
Some of these figures are only approximate but all are official 
and represent conditions in 1921-22.) 











| Catholic Hawn. Epise. | M.E. |Mormon 














Bd. 
Americans and North Europeans] 3,500 | 2,147 | 1,194 | 424 100 
Hawaiians and Part Hawaiians.| 12,630 | 4,680 424 11,000 
ROCUUe Cc Cress iure <n es meee bt (2400) 303 Z 
fe) ONC EsL aay pe ae a eee pau Cally 900 
POrtouR case) 4 ae es Be tees 00) | 
HU INOS ee eee ee ee 2 O00 599 696 35 
JAPALIGSES sem gl Rod eee & 60 | 2,095 103 073 { 
CHING Cais (ue riMe Saye a ee hd 674 783 416 a 
ISOTOA US itp a 0th in) hema yc ee 57 113 866 














otal ge ae Pee err te 8) OS: S210 10.004 1 2.2504" 2.009 11,148 











CENTRAL UNION CHURCH, SPIRE 


How to Help Hawaii 12 


<1 


A Challenge to Christianity 

The missionary challenge of Hawaii is, therefore, a very 
serious one. Take the Japanese situation alone. Here is a 
population of Japanese blood of over 110,000 only 2,835 of 
whom, or about 2% per cent, are members of Christian 
churches. Yet their children are in public schools permeated 
with Christian teaching and are learning English, the language 
of the greatest body of living Christian literature in the 
world. A prominent Japanese from Tokyo, when in Honolulu 
recently, said, in private conversation: ‘ I have observed the 
young people born here of Japanese parents. They are not 
growing up to be Buddhists. They ought to be Christians 
but unless you redouble your efforts I fear they will not be 
anything. I cannot urge them to become Christians for I 
am not a Christian myself, but I can say what I have just 
said to you and urge you to make them good Christians! ”’ 


Why Not a Training Station ? 

Is there not in this remarkable interracial civilization under 
Christian American influence something which would make it 
a valuable training station for social and religious workers 
destined for the Orient? Prof. G. A. Johnston Ross of Union 
Theological Seminary, New York, after a visit of several 
months, has made the very stimulating suggestion that there 
be established in Hawaii a missionary institute, possibly in 
connection with the University of Hawaii, where students 
could complete their training for missionary work and at the 
same time be in actual contact with the various Oriental races. 
The Y. M. C. A. is already encouraging a sort of cadet service 
in Hawaii as a preparation for foreign service and six of our 
secretaries in Honolulu today are ultimately destined for the 
Orient. In the meantime they are having before their eyes a 
working demonstration of what a transformation can be 
wrought in Chinese, Japanese and Koreans by favorable 
contact with a Christian civilization. The University of 


138 The Human Side of Hawau 


Hawaii already has excellent departments of History and 
Sociology, English, Chinese and Japanese — the latter most 
ably occupied by Dr. T. Harada, a graduate of Yale and 
former president of Doshisha University in Japan. If to 
these could be added a strong department of Comparative 
Religions and these courses in History, Sociology, English, 
Chinese, Japanese and Comparative Religions grouped to- 
gether to make up an Institute for Foreign Service, the result 
would be a very attractive center for study, combined with 
practical laboratory experience right here in the very midst 
of our interracial experiment station. Such a school of mis- 
sionary preparation might well attract the best and strongest 
candidates for foreign service from all America. Two hun- 
dred and fifty thousand dollars would endow such an insti- 
tution and bring to Hawaii a strong man as its dean and 
professor of comparative religions. 


Hawaii's “ Bill of Raghis” 

People on the mainland can also help Hawaii by remember- 
ing that we are not an “ Insular Possession” but a full- 
fledged Territory and a candidate for statehood. The 
Hawaiian Legislature of 1923 went on record very clearly as 
to the status of Hawaii by enacting what is called ‘‘ Hawaii’s 
Bill of Rights,” the heart of which is as follows: 

“The Legislature of the Territory of Hawaii hereby makes 
formal assertion and declaration of the claims of said Terri- 
tory concerning its status in the American union, as follows: 


1. That the Territory of Hawaii is an ‘integral part of the 
United States.’ 

2. That as such ‘integral part,’ Hawaii cannot, legally, 
equitably or morally, be discriminated against in re- 
spect of legislation applying to the Union as a whole. 

3. That Hawaii is a unit within the American scheme of 
government, with rights and powers differing from those 
of the states, in so far as certain features of a territorial 


How to Help Hawai 139 


government differ from those of a state; but Hawaii 
carries all the financial responsibilities and burdens of 
a state, so far as the Federal Government is concerned, 
and functions practically as a state in nearly every 
other respect. It should, therefore, be accorded all of 
the benefits and privileges enjoyed by states, in respect 
of matters wherein its functions and responsibilities are 
the same as those of a state.” 


The reason for this explicit declaration was a growing ten- 
dency in Congress and elsewhere to forget or misunderstand 
the true status of Hawaii and class us among the “ insular 
possessions ”’ of the United States or at least leave us out of 
appropriations in which the states generally shared. Some of 
these appropriations are as vitally needed in Hawaii as in 
any state, notably those for education, good roads and farm 
loans from the benefits of which the Territory is now shut out. 


Not an “ Insular Possession ”’ 

The reasons why Hawaii “‘ should be accorded all the bene- 
fits and privileges enjoyed by states’’ in these regards and 
should not be classed as a mere “ insular possession ”’ are two, 
the historical and the equitable. The historical reason is 
admirably given in the Bill of Rights which shows that in the 
negotiation which preceded the treaty of annexation and in 
the treaty itself, as accepted by the Hawaiian government 
and incorporated in the Joint Resolution of Annexation passed 
by Congress, it was expressly stated that the Islands “ shall 
be incorporated into the United States as an integral part 
thereof.”” Moreover the Organic Act by which Congress 
organized Hawaii as a Territory expressly provided, in Sec- 
tion 5, ‘‘ That the Constitution, and except as otherwise pro- 
vided, all the laws of the United States, including laws carrying 
general appropriations, which are not locally inapplicable, 
shall have the same force and effect within the said Territory 


140 The Human Side of Hawan 


as elsewhere in the United States.’”’ Under this law the 
Territory has received Federal assistance under the ‘“‘ Morrill 
Act ”’ for the University of Hawaii and has also received aid 
from the Treasury Department for topographic and hydro- 
graphic surveys. 


How a Territory Differs From a State 


(15 


The equitable reason why Hawaii “ should be accorded all 
the benefits and privileges enjoyed by states,’ so far as its 
territorial form of government permits, is that ‘‘ Hawaii 
already carries all the financial burdens and responsibilities 
of a state so far as the Federal Government is concerned and 
functions practically as a state in every other respect.” It is 
recognized that Hawaii differs from a state in these five par- 
ticulars: (1) Our governor and certain officers are appointed 
by the President. (2) We have no vote for President. (3) 
We have in Congress only a non-voting Delegate instead of 
Senators and Representatives. (4) Our constitution is an 
Organic Act enacted by Congress. (5) Acts of Hawan’s 
legislature can be repealed or amended by Congress, although 
this has never been done. Except in these five regards, the 
status of Hawaii is coequal with that of the regularly or- 
ganized states. 


Hawaii’s National Service 


Now how does Hawaii measure up as a member of the 
Federal Union? We share equally with the states in the 
national defense. During the war the draft law applied in 
the territory exactly as it did in the states and our National 
Guard and Naval Reserve were also called into the service 
of the Federal Government upon the same basis as those of 
the states. We also maintain American standards of living 
and education. As already noted in this book, our public- 
school system, supported by local taxation, is ranked twenty- 
first in the Union — ahead of over half of the states. 


Tlow to Help Hawau 141 


Hawai Pays Her Way! 

Moreover Hawaii pays her own way and more. In 1921 
our internal revenue contributions to the Federal Government 
amounted to $20,680,103 —a sum larger than that paid by 
Maine or Alabama, twice as large as that paid by Utah, 
Arkansas or New Hampshire and twenty times as large as 
that paid by Nevada! In fact there were seventeen states, 
none of which paid as much internal revenue as Hawai. In 
1922 there were nineteen states below us, although the gross 
amount was smaller, $15,515,063. Do not our contributions 
to the Federal household therefore entitle us to share fully in 
its budget? In addition to internal revenue, Hawaii also 
paid import duties amounting to $1,426,716 in 1921 and to 
$1,076,163 in 1922. In the ease of ‘insular possessions ”’ 
this sum would be returned to the local government, but not 
soin Hawai. The whole amount goes to the Federal treasury. 
It should be noted also that Hawai herself paid these duties, 
whereas the duties paid at mainland ports are largely shared 
by inland states having no seacoast. 

Some one may say, ‘ Yes, but hasn’t the Federal Govern- 
ment spent large sums on the seacoast defenses and Pearl 
Harbor Naval Station in Hawaii?’”’ Granted, but for whose 
protection? Prof. Albert Bushnell Hart of Harvard Uni- 
versity stated publicly in Hawaii a few years ago, “‘ I consider 
your fortifications simply a part of the defenses of New York 
and Boston! ” 


Liberty Loan and Relief Work Record 


Hawaii has not only paid her proportional taxes, she has 
done free and volunteer service to the nation equal to that 
of any other part of it. ‘‘ Every call for subscriptions to 
Liberty Loans and War Savings Stamps was apportioned to 
the Territory of Hawaii upon the same basis as to the several 
states, and in every instance the Territory of Hawai ‘ went 
over the top’ in the front rank with wide margins to spare.” 


(‘suBoi0y puv ossouvder ‘osouty)) 
ALOLILSNI O1IOVd-CIW ‘@26t JO SSVTO 


‘OD 0104 ANI 





How to Help Hawai 143 


The same statement is true of drives for Red Cross, Y.M.C.A 
Belgian Relief, and Near East Relief. 

For these reasons Hawaii feels that she is entitled to pro- 
test against the careless tendency to class her as a mere 
‘insular possession,” — she is emphatically not a possession 
but an “integral part ”’ of the United States: and she feels 
moreover that in all appropriations for education, Americani- 
zation, maternity benefits, road building and other matters 
where her needs are equal to the needs of the states she has 
a right to equal consideration.* 


eo) 


Keep Peace with Japan! 


Finally mainland America can help Hawaii supremely by 
cooperating with us and with all men of good will everywhere 
in keeping the peace with Japan by the employment of all 
honorable means, including patient  self-restraint, careful 
cultivation of all channels of international good will and co- 
operation, and the fair and sympathetic study of Japanese 
history, art, civilization and character and ideals. 


Pan-Pacific Union 

One of the most useful organizations in promoting such a 
better understanding is the Pan-Pacific Union of which Mr. 
Alexander Hume Ford is the director. This organization, 
though it has its headquarters in Honolulu, has branches and 
officers in all the countries bordering on the Pacific. By its 
promotion of frequent international gatherings in Hawaii 
such as the Pan-Pacific Educational Conference, Scientific 
Conference, Press Conference and Commercial Conference, it 
is doing foundation work in developing that mutual under- 
standing and desire to work together for the common needs of 
humanity on which the future peace of the Pacific depends. 

*Tt is a pleasure to record that early in 1924 the United States Senate and 


House of Representatives passed the Hawaiian Bill of Rights substantially as 
outlined here, and that President Coolidge signed the bill on March 10, 1924, 


144 The Human Side of Hawan 


An Appeal to the Pacific Coast 


Keeping the peace also involves a definite policy on the 
mainland of giving to the Japanese now in America courteous 
treatment, educational opportunity and Christian teaching. 
As a resident of California for over thirty years, I know con- 
ditions there and I am, therefore, not an advocate of the un- 
restricted immigration of Oriental labor. But I do plead for 
generous, warm-hearted, brotherly treatment of the Japanese 
already in America. The presence of the Japanese on the 
Pacific Coast is a challenge to the Christian churches, at 
least, to give them not merely formal Christian doctrine, not 
merely mission Sunday schools and preaching, but to con- 
tinue to give them an exhibition of that Christian brotherhood, 
fair play, humane treatment and sympathetic good will which 
are the realities of Christ’s gospel without which mere doc- 
trine and ritual are vain. 


A Bridge of Good Will 

A school man in San Jose told me that fifty per cent of the 
pupils in his district were Japanese. I said to him, “ You 
have probably the most important school in Santa Clara 
County, and it ought to be the best school! You ought to be 
giving these little Oriental children the noblest possible inter- 
pretation of Western civilization. You are building a bridge 
between Japan and America! ”’ 

After all that is just what Hawaii means — a human bridge 
of international good will and understanding between Hast 
and West! 


HAWAITANA 


Bibliography of Sources Used in the Preparation 
of this Book 


1. FIRST PERIOD — Hisroricat anp Missionary BACKGROUND 


Ellis, Wiliam: Tour Through Hawaii in 1823 

Malo, David: Hawaiian Antiquities 

Fornander, A.: The Polynesian Race 

Jarves, J. J. : Hawaii 

Dibble, Sheldon: History of Hawaii 

Biographical Memoirs of (1) Sibyl Bingham, (2) Lucy Thurston, 
(3) Laura Fish Judd, (4) Titus Coan, (5) W. P. Alexander, (6) 
Sereno Bishop, (7) L. H. Gulick, (8) H. P. Baldwin. 

Articles in The Friend, Thrum’s Annual and Historical Society Pro- 
ceedings 

Bingham, Hiram: History of the Sandwich Islands 

Alexander, W. D.: Brief History of the Hawaiian People 

Hopkins, Manley: Hawaii 

Anderson, Rufus: The Hawaiian Islands 

Lyman, Henry M.: Hawaiian Yesterdays 

Gulick, O. H.: Pilgrims of Hawati 

Blackman, W. F.: Making of Hawaii 

Westervelt, W. D.: Legends of Hawaii 

Gowan, H. H.: The Napoleon of the Pacific 


2. SECOND PERIOD — Reaction, TuRMomL AND COMPLICATION 


Alexander, W. D.: The Later Years of the Hawaiian Monarchy 

Bird, Isabella (Bishop): Six Months in the Sandwich Islands 

Armstrong, W. N.: Around the World with a King 

Liliuokalani: Hawaii's Story by Hawaii's Queen 

Young, Lucien: The Story of the Boston 

London, Jack: The House of Pride 

Annual Reports of the Hawaiian Board of Missions, 1868-1921 

Articles in The Friend, Thrum’s Annual and Historical Society Pro- 
ceedings 

Johnstone, Arthur: Stevenson in the South Pacific 

Stevenson, R. L.: Father Damien Letter 

Palmer, Julius A.: Memories of Hawaii 


3. THIRD PERIOD — Hawau’s Srratsecic IMporTANCE ToDAY 


Castle, W. Re Jr: Hawai, Past and (Present 

Report of the Federal School Survey 

Allen, Riley: The Public Schools in Hawai; (In Review of Reviews 
Dec., 1921) 

The Centennial Book, published by the Hawaiian Board of Missions 

Centennial Editions of The Friend and the Star-Bulletin 

Reports of Federal Labor Commissioner 

Miscellaneous local pamphlets and articles 

Mauritz, A. S. St. M.: The Path of the Destroyer 

Gerould, Katherine F.: Hawai 

Taylor, Albert P.: Under Hawatian Skies 





INDEX 


Adams, Prof. Romanzo, 127 

Akana, Rev. Akaiko, 73 

UierceiaelKeiey Die! JN CL Ens 

Alexander, Prof. W. D., 40 

Allen, Riley H., 79 

iment Caneabowrd 01) 216-92 1..48. 61, 
63 

AIMericaniza tion, it, 65,075) S304 
He, Waa, Weal 

Anderson, Rufus, 7, 43 

Anglicans (Episcopalians), 53, 135 

Eiinexationsto U.S.) 37,59) 63, 139 

Armstrong, General S. C., 15 

Armstrong, William Nevine, 57 

Ayers study on schools, 79 


Bible, 18, 46, 51, 69 

Bicknell, Rev. James, 46 

esl Gut Liens Wee 

Birth rates, 127, 128, 129 
Bowmen Deis. os 

IBUMClGMailSiam, sae, Wil, 7H, Will, WB, IBY 


Ceiaimlseuliswaay, “7 

Cajsuailin Cook, 8, S. 1, 10, dal 

GaAs Clem Vi ears 4 a6 

Celin@lies, 28, Bil, 0), 805 dalik ass 

Chineseyxii 64.567) 74.575, SOLe81, 
Si, G4, GL, ae ay, Lee, UPA ASB 
ILS, ase 

ClawireMaes, Sati, AO, al, BOE “ale eiey 50), 
Ha, il, GR, Wes 

CUOMO fe dtanvyalllalias Xa oon 

Constantinople, ix 


IDAMe, JR, ISL, BY 

Dean, President A. L., 55 
Decadent period after 1860, 40 
Desha, Rev. Stephen, 73 

Dole, James D., 101 

Dole, Judge S. B., 59 

Dual Citizenship, 115 


IDChbeemenea, We YG, wae! 
Emerson, Dr. Nathaniel B., 25 


IM OMNOS, 8 ON, WO, BG, Bek Oey, wWyee. 
WAG, IB aS, as 

Ford, Alexander Hume, 143 

Givens, Willard E., 79 


InMBiPewels)., IPimoHt, ‘10, Wes 


Hawaiian Board of Missions, 61, 
3339 Ty Tass 

Hawaiians, characteristics of, 3-9, 
64, 69 

Hoike, 31 

ELOLONCUPN OSM O Lo 

Hopkins, Manley, 22, 33 

Hula dance, ix, 5, 25, 58 


eke, 44, @) ab) 

Im MPS ratlon 64.) 1 oes ge eos 
144 

Infant mortality, 86 


Japan <Hie 22a 13 ees 
Japanese, xii) 3,64, 67, 74. 79.86. 

Dd tales Tel(PeW epee aise MEST ISIS 
TUCO DESG. se eiiaeot 


Kahunas, 4, 46, 47 

Kalakaua. 63,40) °47549— > alos 
Kamehameha the Great, 7, 26 
Kamehameha III, 17, 27, 39 
Kamehameha IV, 46, 53 
Kamehameha V, 45, 46, 47 
Kapiolani, 19, 48 

Kawaiahao Church, 28, 37, 54, 73 
Ikcaaeay, IAL, WW, (AT 

Ix@irenme, &, Gu, We, BO, W277, Ss 


Labor problems, 35, 90, 94, 95, 100, 
106 


Language schools, 80, 107 

Laws and constitution of Hawaii, 
UG, I, BS, BGs, MA, WS, Tess) 

Leprosy, 7, 55 

Liliuokalani, 58, 59 

IEpKehbKane Chokeshowena, Gy, 445 lO, 245 Ney 
Nt, Be 


MacCaughey, Vaughan, 42 
Makahiki festival, 25, 26 
McKinley High School, 7 
Methodists, 135 
Micronesian mission, 21 
Wikies TanewweIeSs, Sel, By Gl, (8), Be. 
Us, Wal, zk) 

MAISSTOMAGTESe one llO mm diGamezi ayo leeion 
46, 69, 85. 109 

Missionary descendants, 37, 65, 109 
Mormons, 51, 135 


i; Lis 





New Zealand, xii, 7, 89 


Index 


Opukahaia, 10 
Ozawa case, 124 


Pan-Pacifie Union, 1438 

Picture brides, 106 

Pidgin Hneglish, 77 

Porto Ricans, 3, 67, 69) 128, 135 

Pineapple industry, 90, 100 

Populations, 41261, 7092 he Lok 
lesiey 

Portuguese, 3, 64, 67, 69, 
Uae ALAS, ae 

Punahou School, 75, 76 


TO. 95 


Race mixtures, 67, 73, 105 

Race prejudice, xiv, 54, 60, 73, 104, 
R32 

Ross, Prof..G. A. Johnston, 137 

Revolutions, 17,58, 59) 642597 

Ruth, Princess, 47 


SeianO@l, <i, |, yz 

Scharrenburg, Paul, 91 

SelMO@ils, 1, 1, Wo, C7. BO, Ss. We), 
TUR. AIG, AIL, aka, 1a) 

@lavveuriia, JDve. JEL 1. Il 


Sports, 5, 25-27 
Susan industry, oo,O4n oO pnd OMmOlbs 
107 


Ma bus,e4. 9 
Dies Wavcdadeusaeo sale 
4Poawbiicstnoua, Upekeyz, IIb, Ae 


Ukulele, ix, xi 
University of Hawaii, 55, 102, 137, 
138 


Vanderbilt, Cornelius, Jr., 122 
Wolkeeyni@s U, UO, a7 


Waialua Plantation, 34 

Waimanalo, 99 

Welfare Work, 16, 65, 85, .)S6.e.5 
90, 99, 102 

Westervelt, Rev. W. D., 7 

Whaling, 42 

Worcester, Dr., 14 

Washington Conference, xiii, 82, 
125 


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